There's An Actual Championship For Smoking Cigars Slowly
It's like Superbowl, but for those who smoke their cigars the slowest?
There are world championships for just about everything these days—drone racing, sauna sitting, cheese rolling, hand wrestling. The Cigar Smoking World Championship (CSWC), by comparison, feels almost normal. It’s not about speed or quantity. It’s not even really about the cigar. It’s basically a global contest where you win by doing the least. No coughing, no talking, no relighting, and definitely no TikTok-ing. Just you, a cigar, and the soft tick-tock of time.
This year, the CSWC’s Grand Finale lands in Split, Croatia, from August 29 to 31, at the swanky Le Meridien Lav hotel.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t a smoking contest in the way you’re probably picturing it. Nobody’s racing to finish a cigar. In fact, speed is the enemy. The CSWC is all about precision, poise, and patience. Each participant is handed the exact same cigar—the official Oliva CSWC blend—along with two long wooden matches, a cutter, and a strict rulebook that reads like a military operations manual disguised in velvet. You get 60 seconds to cut, another 60 to light up, and then? The slow game begins.
How Does It Work?
The competition is simple in theory: each participant receives the exact same cigar—an Oliva CSWC blend, handpicked from the box—and has one minute to cut it, and another minute to light it. That’s it. From there, you’re on your own.
You’re not allowed to relight the cigar. You’re not allowed to blow on it. You can’t put it down, wet the tip, hide it under the table, or use your phone to track time. You can’t talk for the first five minutes. You can’t shake off the ash until the 40-minute mark—do it earlier, and you get penalised. Burn the cigar band? That’s 15 minutes docked from your time. Put it in the ashtray? Another 10 gone. This isn’t puff-puff-pass—it’s puff-and-pray-it-stays-lit.
There’s a judge keeping track of everything: ash drops, burns, disqualifications, and final smoking time. The person who keeps their cigar burning the longest—with the fewest penalties—wins.
How Long Are We Talking?
The current record is 3 hours, 24 minutes, and 27 seconds. That’s one cigar, no relights, and over three hours of sitting still, puffing with surgical consistency. Most people last under 90 minutes. The best can double that. It’s not so much a competition as a meditative endurance test—with cigars, blazers, and a quiet room full of people trying not to blink too hard.
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How Do You Join?
To compete, you need to register for your country’s official qualifier. There’s an entry fee (₹4,200 in India), which covers the competition cigar, food and drinks, and access to the event. You don’t need to be a cigar expert, but you do need a steady hand, a calm demeanour, and some basic knowledge of how cigars burn.
Most importantly, you need patience. Fast smokers don’t make it far. In this game.
Why Does It Exist?
Honestly, god knows why. Maybe we’re running out of things to entertain ourselves with.
But jokes aside, think of the CSWC as Wimbledon, but for cigar lovers. It’s not just about the smoking—it’s about the ritual. The quiet focus. The community. It brings together global cigar culture, premium brands, old-school traditions, and a very niche kind of performance under pressure.