Q. How do I register for this competition?
A. Registration for this competition opens on Tuesday, June 23, 2026 at 7:15 PM and will be open until Friday, August 7, 2026 at 11:59 PM. You'll need a WCA Account to register. Once registration has opened, you can register at the register button to your left or at this link. Select the events you'll be competing in and any comments you'd like the organization team to know. After pressing Register, you'll be prompted to pay using Stripe. You must pay your registration fee to be eligible to compete. If there is still space in the competition and you do not receive an email saying your registration has been accepted within 48 hours of paying, please contact the organization team.

A. Competitors should understand the WCA Regulations before competing. For something a little more digestable, you can read the WCA Competitor Tutorial or watch this video guide. We will have a New Competitor Tutorial at the beginning of the day where you can learn and ask questions.

Q. Who should I ask if I have any questions?
A. Your delegates for this competition are Mickey Doyle and Kurt Sparks. Please ask them if you have any questions.

Q. What are groups? How can I find which ones I'm in?
A. Groups are how we determine when each competitor competes. During each round, we will have several groups that will be called up in succession. When the group in which you're supposed to compete is called, please come up to the cube dropoff table and submit your puzzle. When the group you're judging is called, come up and find an empty station to judge. Groups will be emailed to competitors or in a tab on this website in the week leading up to the competition.

Q. Do competitors need to volunteer? How do I do that?
A. We require that all competitors volunteer as judges during the competition day. You will be assigned a group to judge in. We will go over judging in our New Competitor Tutorial.

Q. How old do I have to be to compete?
A. WCA Competitions are open to cubers of any age! We do not have age groups so all competitors compete with each other.

Q. What do I need to bring to the competition?
A. You'll need to bring the puzzles required for any event you'll be competing in. Most competitors like to bring other cubes to warm up with. All timing equipment will be supplied by the WCA Delegates at the competition.

Q. Where can I find results for this competition?
A. Live results will be visible on WCA Live and will be posted on the WCA Website shortly after the competition. If it's your first competition, you'll get a WCA ID when results are posted to the WCA Website.

Q. How can I have a competition in my hometown?
A. There is now an Iowa delegates that may be willing to delegate competitions in Iowa by email here. We would love to help you organize a comp anywhere in the area!

Venue and Parking
This competition will be held at the Waterloo Convention Center in Downtown Waterloo, Iowa. The event will be on the 2nd floor with clearly marked signs. There is plenty of free parking available on side streets and near by parking lots and also there is a parking garage near the venue.

Food
There are several restaurants within a one mile radius of the event location including; Jimmy Johns, Sub City, Doey Joey's Pizza, Basil Pizza, Newtons Cafe, Starbecks Smokehouse, Single Speed Brewing Co, Big Head Burger, Screaming Eagle Bar and Grill, and El Patron Mexican.

Hotels
Best Western Hotel is across the road from Waterloo Convention Center connected by an enclosed skywalk. Best Western Hotel has a block of 9 rooms at $99.00 for the dates of 8/14/26 and 8/15/26. If interested, please call the hotel directly at 319-888-1000 and request to book a room for the Waterloo Cubing Event or click on the link
https://www.bestwestern.com/en_US/book/hotel-rooms.16111.html?groupId=V76LK1F7
Other hotel options are The Econo Lodge Inn & Suites which is in downtown Waterloo and Marriott Hotel which is .7 miles away.

Travel
The closest airport to the venue is Waterloo airport approximately 7 miles from the venue.

For each event, competitors are called to compete one group at a time. To facilitate this, all competitors will be assigned to a specific group to each event. Judging and scrambling assignments for helping out the competition also listed for each competitors.

The competitor cards will be available on the on the lanyard for each competitor at registration in the morning of the competition. All competitors will be required to wear the lanyards throughout the day of the competition.

Group assignments will be announced closer to the competition date.

Unofficial Events - During Lunch

Parent/Child Team Blind

Parents (or guardians) and their children will be competing in a Best of 2 event format. This unofficial event will consist of a competitor and a blindfolded parent/legal guardian. Team BLD is an event in which one person is blindfolded and turning the cube while the other person tells you what moves to do. See this video for a demonstration of how this works. Note the parent does NOT need to know how to solve a cube to participate (although knowing some notation may be helpful).

Signup for this event at this link.

Requirements to participate:

• A registered competitor
• A parent or legal guardian of the registered comeptitor
• One 3x3 cube
• One Blindfold

Parent/Child Team BLD Format:

• Bo2 (Best of 2)
• Cutoff: None
• Time Limit: 10 minutes cumulative (for both solves)

Competitor Limit:

20 teams of 2

How Parent/Child Team BLD Works:

In this specific event, the parent will be the one blindfolded and turning the puzzle while the competitor instructs the parent what moves to apply to the puzzle. The type of communication is completely up to the team. Similar to a usual WCA event, when our group is called up, both participants will bring their one cube up to the drop off station to be scrambled. Once your team is called up to a station, the parent will sit down and place the blindfold over their eyes. The competitor standing beside the parent will be able to inspect the cube for up to 15 seconds. Once both competitors are ready, the competitor will place the cube on the mat in front of the parent, the parent will place their hands on the timer, and will begin the solve. From this point forward, only the parent may apply moves to the cube. The competitor beside the parent can communicate however they would like to their parent so long as they do not purposefully try and distract competitors at the stations around them (i.e. no screaming or intentionally trying to interfere with other teams' solves - this will result in a DNF). The same penalties are still applied to the final resting state of the puzzle.

Registration will close Friday, August 7, 2026 at 11:59 PM CDT!