The growing human population and fluctuating climatic conditions have raised significant concern for global food security, with the current improvement rate of wheat inadequate to meet future demand. This slow improvement rate is attributed partly to the long generation time which increases the length of the breeding cycle. ‘Speed breeding’ technology greatly shortens generation time, thereby accelerating wheat breeding and research programmes. The concept was inspired by NASA-funded research in the 80s aiming to grow wheat in space, which used controlled temperature and extended photoperiods to grow a generation of wheat much faster than normal. Over the years, the technology has been refined and streamlined to accelerate crop breeding. The speed breeding approach now enables up to 6 generations of spring bread wheat or durum wheat per year, instead of 2 or 3 under normal glasshouse or field conditions. In 2018, we published the first multi-crop speed breeding protocols, which provides the research and breeding community with a ‘step-by-step’ guide to establishing both small- and large-scale rapid cycling facilities (Watson & Ghosh et al. 2018 Nature Plants 4:23-29; Ghosh & Watson et al. 2018 Nature Protocols 13:2944-2963). In this presentation, we reveal the latest advances in speed breeding at the University of Queensland and John Innes Centre, and highlight how we are combining the tool with other leading-edge breeding technologies, such as genome-editing and genomic selection. We provide examples of how the technology is accelerating wheat breeding in both the public and private sectors.