2024 WSL Championship Tour preview: Full schedule and surfers to watch
The 2024 season kicks off in Hawaii on 29 January with another nine stops on the agenda that covers seven countries across four continents. Discover the competition format, full schedule and stars to watch.
Surfing
Battle-ready surf champions, a slew of exciting rookies, and a countdown to the Olympic Games – the 2024 WSL Championship Tour season promises to make plenty of headlines.
All but one of the Tour's 10 stops take place before Paris 2024 and will be a chance for the top surfers in the world to test themselves before the Olympic surfing competition kicks off on the world-famous Teahupo’o wave in seven months.
The Championship Tour kicks off at the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii on 29 January with 36 male and 18 female surfers set to compete during the regular season that spans seven countries. Fiji is back on the schedule after a seven-year break while the WSL Finals will once again take place in Lower Trestles, USA in September.
From champion surfers to up-and-coming rookies, competition schedule and format, here’s all you need to know about the 2024 season of professional surfing’s top circuit.
Format of the 2024 WSL Championship Tour
The regular Championship Tour season features nine events with 54 surfers set to take part before the mid-season cut-off in the second half of April.
Surfers will compete at five stops, in Hawaii, Portugal and Australia, before the cut-off. At that point the men’s field will be reduced to 24 top-ranked athletes and the female field to 12 athletes.
The remaining surfers will then compete in Tahiti, from 22 to 31 May, just over two months before the same venue hosts the Olympic surfing competition.
The regular season will wrap up with a return to Fiji’s Cloudbreak, a powerful left-hand barrel where athletes will have to surf waves that can reach as high as 20 feet in a bid to clinch the last spots in the WSL Final 5.
The world titles will once again be decided in a one-day, winner-takes-all competition with the season’s best surfers going head to head. The 2024 edition will mark the fourth time that Lower Trestles hosts the WSL Finals.
The Top 22 men and Top 10 women in the rankings will automatically qualify for the 2025 Championship Tour. The remaining spots - 10 for men and five for women - will be allocated to the top performers in the WSL Challenger Series. There will also be two wildcards on offer for men and one for women.
2024 WSL Championship Tour: Stars to watch
Brazil's Filipe Toledo and USA's Caroline Marks head into the 2024 season as the defending champions.
For Toledo, 2024 could be the biggest year yet. The Brazilian surfer is going for his third consecutive world title – a feat that would match the achievement of his compatriot Gabriel Medina who has the most world titles after USA’s Kelly Slater. A reserve at Tokyo 2020, this year Toledo also has the chance to win Olympic gold after earning a provisional Paris 2024 quota* through last season's WSL rankings.
One of Toledo's toughest competitors, Griffin Colapinto, promises to be an even bigger challenge in the upcoming season as he continues to hit new career milestones. The USA surfer topped the rankings for the first time in May 2023 and finished second overall in the regular season.
This season Colapinto will be joined by younger brother Crosby who is making his debut on the Tour. The brothers have travelled together to some competitions in 2023, but competing on the same Tour might prove the extra boost both surfers need to excel in 2024.
Griffin Colapinto is eager to win his first world title, having come close last season, similarly to Australia’s Ethan Ewing and Jack Robinson, who are also going for their first.
Robinson enjoyed his best year in 2023, winning the season opener in Hawaii and later the Tahiti Pro, before welcoming his first child in late December. Ewing finished as the runner-up last season with four podium finishes on the regular season and a solid performance in the WSL Finals.
Always a trophy contender, Medina just missed the WSL Final last season and is still hungry for that fourth world title.
USA’s John John Florence is bidding for his third while the season's wildcard Slater wants to update the history books with a record-breaking 12th. As Slater underwent hip surgery in September, his form remains in question, though that would not make it any less exciting to watch the surfing legend in action.
Caroline Marks made the dazzling leap from wildcard to winner on the 2023 Championship Tour. From a shaky, ninth-place start to three victories in the second half of the season, including at Tahiti Pro, and upsetting Olympic champion Carissa Moore in the final head-to-head at Lower Trestles, Marks' world title campaign was a perfect example of grit. She now heads into 2024 with even more confidence.
Five-time world champion Carissa Moore announced earlier inJanuary that she will be stepping away from competitve surfing after the Paris Olympics.
Just days ahead of this season's first WSL event, eight-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore said that she will be taking a break from full-time competiton for a year.
“I am planning to take this time as a refresh for myself physically, mentally, and enjoy following swells and free surfing in new places,” said Gilmore in a WSL press release. “I have some projects and trips I want to do, which haven’t been possible while traveling during the season. I am still passionate and dedicated to competing, and I have goals and dreams that I am still chasing - I’m excited for this year to activate those and I look forward to returning in 2025.”
Her fellow Australian Sally Fitzgibbons will add more fire to the circuit, with plenty of young talent in the mix as well.
Last season’s rookie Caitlin Simmers emerged as the breakthrough of the season. The USA teen won two stops, advanced to the WSL Final 5 and finished fourth overall.
Australia's Molly Picklum is another youngster impressing on the big stage. A rookie in the 2022 season, she missed the mid-season cut-off that year, but made a powerful return in 2023, never finishing below the Top 5 and advancing to the WSL Finals, which also secured her a provisional Paris 2024 quota*.
*As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games, athletes' participation at the Paris 2024 Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at Paris 2024.
Click here to see the official qualification system for each sport.
Athletes on the 2024 WSL Championship Tour
Female
Qualifiers based on the 2023 Championship Tour rankings
Caroline Marks - USA
Carissa Moore - Hawaii
Tyler Wright - Australia
Caitlin Simmers - USA
Molly Picklum - Australia
Lakey Peterson - USA
Tatiana Weston-Webb - Brazil
Gabriela Bryan - Hawaii
Bettylou Sakura Johnson - Hawaii
Sally Fitzgibbons - Australia
Qualifiers based on the 2023 Challenger Series rankings
India Robinson - Australia
Sawyer Lindblad - USA
Alyssa Spencer - USA
Isabella Nichols - Australia
Luana Silva - Brazil
Wildcards
Johanne Defay - France
Brisa Hennessy - Costa Rica
Replacement
Sophie McCulloch - Australia
Male
Qualifiers based on the 2023 Championship Tour rankings
Filipe Toledo - Brazil
Ethan Ewing - Australia
Griffin Colapinto - USA
Joao Chianca - Brazil
Jack Robinson - Australia
Gabriel Medina - Brazil
Yago Dora - Brazil
John John Florence - Hawaii
Leonardo Fioravanti - Italy
Ryan Callinan - Australia
Connor O’Leary - Australia
Barron Mamiya - Hawaii
Italo Ferreira - Brazil
Kanoa Igarashi - Japan
Ian Gentil - Hawaii
Jordy Smith - South Africa
Liam O’Brien - Australia
Caio Ibelli - Brazil
Matthew McGillivray - South Africa
Callum Robson - Australia
Rio Waida - Indonesia
Seth Moniz - Hawaii
Qualifiers based on the 2023 Challenger Series rankings
Cole Houshmand - USA
Samuel Pupo - Brazil
Jacob Willcox - Australia
Crosby Colapinto - USA
Eli Hanneman - Hawaii
Imaikalani deVault - Hawaii
Frederico Morais - Portugal
Jake Marshall - USA
Kade Matson - USA
Deivid Silva - Brazil
Wildcards
Kelly Slater - USA
Miguel Pupo - Brazil
Replacement
Ramzi Boukhiam - Morocco
Full schedule of the 2024 WSL Championship Tour
- Banzai Pipeline, Oahu, Hawaii: 29 January – 10 February
- Sunset Beach, Oahu, Hawaii: 12 – 22 February
- Peniche, Leiria, Portugal: 6 – 16 March
- Bells Beach, Victoria, Australia: 26 March – 5 April
- Margaret River, Western Australia, Australia: 11 – 21 April
Mid-season cut: From 36 male surfers to 24, 18 female surfers to 12
- Teahupo’o, Tahiti, French Polynesia: 22 – 31 May
- Punta Roca, La Libertad, El Salvador: 6 – 15 June
- Saquarema, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 22 – 30 June
- Cloudbreak, Tavarua, Fiji: 20 – 29 August
WSL Final 5 determined
- WSL Finals: Lower Trestles, San Clemente, California, United States