WCA adds FTO, ending Clock as a official event in 2027
The WCA is adding FTO and retiring Clock after Worlds 2027, its first new official event since Skewb in 2014. The move rewards a puzzle with real hardware and a real scene.
The World Cube Association has added Face Turning Octahedron, or FTO, to the official event list and will remove Clock after the WCA World Championship 2027. The Board approved the change on June 24, 2026, setting up one of the biggest shifts to the WCA’s event identity in years.
FTO will be eligible for WCA competitions from January 2, 2027, and it will use Average of 5. Clock stays official until the 2027 World Championship, which the WCA says will be the last competition to feature it. The WCA also said this is the first new official event since Skewb was added in 2014, a gap that underlines how rarely the official lineup changes.
The FTO side of the decision is not coming out of nowhere. The WCA said the event has had sustained community interest for several years, and recent surveys showed a majority of respondents supported adding it. That matters because FTO is no longer just a curiosity or a side event puzzle. In 2024, DianSheng released a magnetic version, and speed versions followed from other companies including Dayan, Qiyi, and Shengshou. For competitors, that means the event now has the kind of hardware base, method development, and tutorial ecosystem that usually separate a hobby puzzle from an official event.
Clock’s removal is the more surprising call, even with the event’s recent competitive resurgence. Better puzzles and methods such as 7-Simul, which the SpeedSolving community wiki says was first discovered in late 2018 or 2019 and developed further in 2022 and 2023, have helped Clock get much faster at the top. But the WCA appears to have weighed more than raw solves. Clock requires a special scrambling process, adds workload for organizers and delegates, and is harder for spectators to read at a glance than events like 3x3, Pyraminx, or Skewb.
The WCA has made a similar pruning decision before. It removed 3x3x3 With Feet effective January 1, 2020, after calling it the least popular speedsolving event by a significant margin. That history makes this change stand out: the WCA is not only adding an event, it is willing to cut one that still has a living competitive scene if it no longer fits the scale, logistics, and presentation it wants.
For organizers, software teams, and method developers, the clock is now ticking toward January 2027. FTO is entering the official mix, and Clock is headed for one final Worlds run before it disappears from the WCA stage.
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