Photo: Tommy Pierucki//World Surf League
The World Surf League announced its schedule for the 2025 Championship Tour on Wednesday with some notable changes to the upcoming season. Snapper is back, giving Australia a full three-leg run once again. J-Bay is back too. Trestles is still on the CT schedule even after it was announced Cloudbreak would take its spot as home to the 2025 WSL Finals. Sunset Beach is gone. And there are now seven total events before 2025’s mid-year cut — an important switch from the five events held in previous years before a chunk of the CT field faced relegation. In total, the 2025 Championship Tour will feature 12 total events between the end of January and early September.
Banzai Pipeline, Hawaii, USA: January 27 – February 8
Surf Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE: February 14 – 16
Peniche, Portugal: March 15 – 25
Punta Roca, El Salvador: April 2 – 12
Bells Beach, Victoria, Australia: April 18 – 28
Snapper Rocks, Queensland, Australia: May 3 – 13
Margaret River, Western Australia, Australia: May 17 – 27*
Lower Trestles, San Clemente, Calif., USA: June 9 – 17
Saquarema, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: June 21 – 29
Jeffreys Bay, South Africa: July 11 – 20
Teahupo’o, Tahiti, French Polynesia: August 7 – 16**
WSL Finals – Cloudbreak, Fiji: August 27 – September 4
Event number two at Surf Abu Dhabi will be the Championship Tour’s first wave pool event outside of the Surf Ranch in Lemoore, California. The venue, which just hosted last month’s Abu Dhabi Longboard Classic, is powered by Kelly Slater Wave Co. and is the largest wave pool in the world. The WSL had previously announced both the Finals move and the Abu Dhabi event. Bringing back Snapper Rocks, J-Bay, and extending the overall schedule to 12 events with seven before the mid-year cut were all surprises. Holding two more events with a full field of surfers will be an interesting new wrinkle to keep an eye on when the tour kicks off in early 2025 – it gives rookies two additional events to find their footing on tour.
“We’ve built this schedule to include more events and feature a variety of breaks,” said Ryan Crosby, WSL CEO. “We’ve brought back some of the Tour’s most desirable locations, while aligning dates with favorable swell windows, to open up more opportunity for quality surf. We’ll see a great mix of locations from heavy-water barrels, to high-performance waves, and pristine point breaks. It’ll be an exciting showcase of the world’s best surfing featuring the incredible CT talent. We can’t wait to kick off in January 2025. See you at Pipe.”
