Photo: Laurent Masurel//World Surf League
Three men and three women have qualified for the 2025 Championship Tour with one more stop still left on the Challenger Series schedule. That leaves two spots up for grabs on the women’s side and seven for the men’s before the CS closes out its year at the Corona Saquarema Pro later this week. While plenty of eyes will be focused on who makes the cut in Brazil, here is a list of the surfers who have already punched their ticket to next year’s main event.
Sally Fitzgibbons
Sally Fitzgibbons finished the 2021 world tour ranked third overall after winning a heat in the first-ever WSL Finals. She’s missed back-to-back mid-season cuts following that campaign and now she’s turned around from both instances by re-qualifying via the Challenger Series. This weekend’s win at the EDP Ericeira Pro solidified the Australian’s return and her second win on this year’s Challenger Series. Next year will mark Fitzgibbons’ 15th on the world tour — an impressive run that’s seen 12 event wins.
Bella Kenworthy
Seventeen-year-old Bella Kenworthy put together a solid series of results on this year’s Challenger Series and now she’ll be a rookie on the 2025 Championship Tour. The Californian failed to reach the quarterfinals just once this year (25th in the Gold Coast Pro). Since then, Kenworthy has reached the quarterfinal, won, made a second consecutive final, and another quarterfinal appearance in that order.
Isabella Nichols
Australia’s Isabella Nichols is another casualty of the CT’s mid-year cut who hasn’t blinked at relegation. In 2023, Nichols won the Sydney Surf Pro early in the Challenger Series year and re-qualified. She came back and won the same event this year en route to qualifying again. It’s the third time in as many years Nichols has won an event in her home country at the CS or CT level. Her 2022 win at the Margaret River Pro was definitely the most dramatic, needing (and getting) an event win in order to squeak in just above the mid-year cut line.
Samuel Pupo
Samuel Pupo barely missed the mid-year cut and was sent down to the Challenger Series in May for the second year in a row. The Brazilian has been a force on the CS in both years, however, winning three of the Series’ 11 events through that stretch. Results were mostly boom or bust in 2023 for Pupo but this year he’s been much more consistent reaching the Round of 16 or better in all but one event.
Ian Gouveia
Ian Gouveia’s return to the world tour is going to be a feel-good story in 2025. Gouveia spent 2017 and 2018 on the CT and admitted that this was going to be his last swing at getting back to that level.
“That was a long six years,” he said back in August. “At the beginning of the year I pretty much told myself that this was going to be my do or die year. I wasn’t feeling like I was frustrated or anything with my career, I was just like, ‘Maybe it’s time, you know? To do another thing and enjoy family and freesurfing.”
Alejo Muniz
Alejo Muniz is another experienced veteran surfer making a comeback. The Brazilian was a mainstay on the CT between 2011 and 2016 before injuries prevented him from keeping his spot on the world tour. He’s been working to get back to the tour ever since and now he’ll turn 35 years old at the beginning of his comeback campaign.
