Controlling light in all its degrees of freedom is steadily gaining traction, extending our familiar 2D transverse forms of electromagnetic waves to include 3D control (all three components of the electric field), and spatiotemporal control for 4D forms of structured light.1 Despite the advances, there still exist solutions to Maxwell’s equations that have not yet been demonstrated,2 hindered by the need to induce higher-order multipoles (beyond dipoles) and toroidal excitations in matter.3 Reporting in Nature Photonics, Qiwen Zhan and colleagues demonstrate the first optical toroidal vortex.4 They bypass the need for exotic materials and rare electronic transitions by exploiting conformal mapping of a space–time shaped vortex pulse, twisting and folding the optical field to form the familiar toroidal nature. Their approach heralds new spatial and temporal control of structured light, with the potential to impact fields from topology to quantum information.