How do you set a node reference field's default value when creating a node programatically?
This should work :

$values = [
  'type' =&gt; 'competition',
  'title‎' =&gt; 'my title goes here',
  'field_competition_node_reference‎' =&gt; [['target_id' =&gt; 1]],
];
Node::create($values);