This year’s Rubik’s Cube World Championship to be Biggest Ever

The Rubik’s Cube World Championship, which sees competitors battle to solve the iconic cube as quickly as possible, is being staged in France for the first time from Thursday 13 to Sunday 16 July 2017 and will see a record number of ‘speedcubers’ in action.

Australian Feliks Zemdegs will defend the world title for the Rubik’s Cube, which he has held since winning in 2013 with an average solve time of 8.18 seconds and defended in 2015 with an average solve time of 7.56 seconds.

Although the championship is traditionally aimed at individual competitors, this year the inaugural Nations Cup will see teams of three from 45 countries go head-to-head for the first time.

Due to the excitement around the new Nations Cup format, it is anticipated that Ernő Rubik, the legendary Hungarian creator of the iconic Rubik’s Cube, will be in attendance at the event. A professor of architecture from Budapest, he created the cube in 1974 to encourage his students to think about spatial relationships. Since its international launch in 1980, an estimated 450 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold, making it the world’s most popular toy.

The Rubik’s Cube World Championship will take place at Les Docks de Paris, France, and will welcome 1,100 competitors from 69 countries, competing in eighteen individual competition classes, including blindfolded solving, solving with feet and tackling different puzzles. The first championship took place in 1982.