WCA adds FTO and removes Clock as official events!

FTO is added and Clock is removed as official events!

For the first time in over 12 years, a new puzzle will become an official event at speedcubing competitions! It’s FTO, or Face Turning Octahedron, which will become a new event starting January 2, 2027 – the first addition of a new event since Skewb was added in 2014. The puzzle could be described as an eight-sided 3×3-cube that is rotated around its faces instead of its corners. FTO is somewhere between 4×4 and Megaminx in terms of difficulty. The puzzle has long been one of the most popular non-competition events, but received another major boost in popularity after DianSheng released its magnetic FTO in the summer of 2024. After this boost, there have been many advocates for the event’s entry into the competitive scene, and they are certainly happy about yesterday’s announcement.

However, the WCA board chose to pair this announcement with the removal of Clock as an event in the summer of 2027. Competitions may hold the event until July 18, 2027, where the World Championships in Uppsala the following weekend will see the last official solves in Clock ever as a final world champion will be crowned. The Clock puzzle is admittedly mechanically completely different from all other puzzles that are competition events, but considering that Clock was one of the most popular events in 2026, far from everyone is happy with this decision. Events have been removed from the WCA before (Magic and Master Magic in 2012 and 3×3 with feet in 2019), but given Clock’s popular status, we might not have had the final say on this matter yet…

If you want to prepare yourself and buy your first FTO, we have collected them in a category here.

You can find more information about the news and everything around it in the video on our YouTube channel below!