This edition's lead · 5 Sep 2026
A national record falls in Ecuador
Anthony Gerard Álvarez Ludeña lowered Ecuador's 2×2 average record to 1.87 at Ciudad Blanca Ibarra 2026, a time faster than 96.0% of everyone ever ranked in the event.
The record's whole lineage →Stories
All stories →The data essay
The world record that 82,518 people have beaten
In 2003 the fastest official solve in history was 16.53 seconds. Today it would rank 83,913th, and the median competitor is within a few seconds of it. This is what a sport looks like before it finds its limits.
The essay
The most collaborative sport on earth
Cubing measures its athletes to the hundredth of a second, and your rivals do the measuring. 96% of everyone who has ever competed has never won an event. They keep coming, and that is the whole story.
The standard
It has never been harder to win a Saturday
In 2008 the typical competition final was won with a 13.56 average. Last year it took 7.44: the same trophy now demands twice the speed, and someone has lost a final with a 3.85.
The long read
Nineteen entered the first Worlds. One never stopped.
Budapest, 5 June 1982: nineteen champions from nineteen countries. The winner never competed again. The runner-up is faster now, in his sixties, than he was on the podium. What the official record holds of the sport's founding morning.
Learn
The whole journey →Anyone can solve the cube, including you. The Learn section is a taught journey with a difference: every algorithm plays as an animated cube that solves itself, move by move, notation lighting up as it goes. Level 1 takes a total beginner to a full solve in eight steps. Level 2 goes under a minute with seven tools, checked by exhaustive search against all 62,208 last layers a cube can produce. Level 3 opens the competition system.
Records, by days standing
singles · All records, every event, ticking nightly →| Event | Record | Holder | Days | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3×3 Fewest Moves | 16 moves | Sebastiano Tronto | 2,640 | |
| 4×4 blindfolded | 51.96 | Stanley Chapel | 1,317 | |
| Pyraminx | 0.73 | Simon Kellum | 990 | |
| 6×6 | 57.69 | Max Park | 498 | |
| Clock | 1.53 | Lachlan Gibson | 344 | |
| 3×3 Multi-Blind | 63 of 65 cubes · 58:23 | Graham Siggins | 323 | |
| 2×2 | 0.39 | Ziyu Ye (叶梓渝) | 316 | |
| 4×4 | 15.18 | Tymon Kolasiński | 274 | |
| 5×5 blindfolded | 1:58.59 | Stanley Chapel | 247 |
This weekend on the circuit
from the WCA calendar, nightlyFlorida Championship 2026 runs Saturday 5 to Sunday 6 September in Tallahassee, Florida, the United States. It is one of 43 competitions on the weekend's calendar, across 29 countries. Results land here the morning after each one finishes. If you are competing, your results will be on your page by breakfast. Find it just below.
There is a page here for every competitor on earth.
296,695 people have entered an official cubing competition since 1982, in 166 countries, at 17,669 competitions. Every one of them has a page: every solve, every ranking, every personal best, rewritten nightly as the results come in. If you have ever sat at a timer, so do you.
Try your own name, your child's, or a champion's. The search covers all 296,695.
One of those pages
- Graham Siggins — holder of the multi-blind world record: 63 of 65 cubes solved blindfolded, in 58:23.
- Max Park — holder of the 6×6 and 7×7 world records; the 7×7 fell to him again 15 days ago.
The census
Every official solve since 1982Cubing's whole official history fits in one picture. Each bar is a year of solves, 30,069,982 in all, from the 1982 World Championship to the 20 competitions of the past seven days. The long flat line is real: between 1982 and 2003 there were no official competitions anywhere on earth. The red bar is this year, still filling.
Completed solves recorded in official WCA competition, by calendar year. DNFs not counted. The dip in 2020–21 is the COVID-19 pandemic: 240 and 242 competitions were held in those years, against 1,328 in 2019.
Latest records
as they fall · the full run →Reading this page: record tags: WR world · NR national · continental: ER Europe, NAR North America, SAR South America, AsR Asia, AfR Africa, OcR Oceania · a single is one solve's time · an average is the middle three of five solves, best and worst discarded.
Competitions
All competitions →In the past seven days there were 20 official competitions in 16 countries. Every one gets a written recap the moment its results land, with no correspondent required. The latest:
- Ciudad Blanca Ibarra 2026 · Ecuador · 41 competitors — Anthony Gerard Álvarez Ludeña won the 3×3 · recap
- Compostela Cubing 2026 · Spain · 54 competitors — Luís Pedro Gomes Costa won the 3×3 · recap
- Don't DNF Dallas OR 2026 · United States · 48 competitors — William Greninger won the 3×3 · recap
- Greitieji Miško Kuberiai 2026 · Lithuania · 22 competitors — Julius Dobilas won the 3×3 · recap
- Hungarian All-Rounder 7 2026 · Hungary · 48 competitors — Gergő Zalán Molnár won the 3×3 · recap
- KC College Cube Open 2026 · Bangladesh · 55 competitors — Md Tahsan Islam won the 3×3 · recap
New to all this?
If your child has just started solving, or you have, competitive cubing is more open than almost any sport: no trials, no team, no minimum standard. You enter, you solve, you leave with an official time and a page here. Start here explains what a first competition is actually like.