The Cubing Contests admin team is introducing our new policy for timing of attempts, effective January 1st, 2027.

• WCA competitions will be required to use Gen5 Stackmat timers in 4-pad timing mode for all unofficial events recognized through CC starting on January 1st, 2027. This is in line with WCA policy going forward and ensures consistent use of 4-pad timing throughout these competitions.
• Unofficial competitions are effectively unchanged. They will still be required to use stackmat timers of any mass-produced brand and/or version as before. However, as a clarification, organizers are free to choose requiring either 2-pad timing or 4-pad timing for a competition, as long as that timing method is used consistently throughout the entirety of the competition for all attempts. For organizers, if you are unsure whether using a certain brand/version of timer is acceptable, please contact the admin team in advance.
• Meetups will be required to use stackmat timers for attempts under 10 minutes starting on January 1st, 2027, with stopwatches being required for attempts longer than 10 minutes. Any phone timers or other single-touchpad timing devices/methods will no longer be allowed. The rest of the meetup rules remain the same as before; only the way attempts are being timed is changing. Meetup records and rankings will be updated to include a filter for displaying results that fall under this new update in a similar way to WCA rankings with 4-pad.

We understand that this update to the rules allows records/rankings for some sprint events to be theoretically easier to achieve at some unofficial competitions compared to WCA competitions. However, it is not possible for Cubing Contests to provide 4-pad timing equipment to unofficial competition organizers (especially in regions such as China) and allowing 2-pad for WCA competitions introduces a very high risk of it being accidentally used for official rounds. We also believe it is likely that non-speedstacks 4-pad timing devices will become more ubiquitous and easily available in future years, and expect to eventually standardize 4-pad timing for unofficial competitions once it is feasible for organizers. After lengthy discussion, the admin team has determined this rule update to be the best solution going forward.