For years, the cubing world had been watching two names inch closer to the unthinkable – Xuanyi Geng and Yiheng Wang, the Chinese prodigies who between them, owned almost every fast single on record. The first official sub-3 solve was coming, it was just a matter of when and which of them would get there first.
However, on February 8, 2026, at a local competition in Gdańsk, Poland, a 10 year-old boy named Teodor Zajder sat down, picked up his cube, and did something nobody had ever done in an official WCA competition. He didn't just break the sub-3 barrier, he demolished it with a 2.76 second solve.
An impossible jump
Sub-3 had been done before – just never in an official competition. Ruihang Xu once solved a cube in 2.68 seconds on camera at home and Leo Borromeo hit 2.78 in an unofficial setting. But none of it counted. WCA competitions require official judging and the kind of pressure that makes even the worlds top cubers have butter fingers. Doing it at home is already incredibly difficult, but doing it in competition is another beast.
Zajder did it when it mattered most.
It also took longer to crack sub-3 than any previous barrier in the sport's history, occurring 2,633 days following the first official sub-4 solve. Almost eight years of the world's best cubers trying and failing to get there. So, when it finally happened, it was surprising that it came from a 10 year-old who wasn't even on anyone's radar.
Who is Teodor Zajder?
Don't let the world record fool you into thinking this came out of nowhere. Zajder had already been competing in over 60 WCA competitions, and he was no stranger to world records. He previously held the 2x2 single world record with a 0.43 second solve and is the reigning European Champion for it as well. He has also been one of the fastest rising young cubers in the world for years. The 3x3 single record just happened faster than anyone anticipated.
What comes next?
Cubing is progressing faster than ever, and it is not crazy to believe that this record will be broken soon. In fact, a little more than two months following Teodor's WR, Xuanyi Geng put up a 2.80 second single at the end of his 2.71 WR average – just 0.04 off of Teodor's time. Only time will tell when Teodor's record will fall, but when it does, whether it is in a month, a year, or a decade, the cubing world will go insane.
-- Harsh Patel, The Cube Hub