Dissecting The 2025 CT Calendar: What’s Changed And Why It Matters

It has been exactly 150 days since Ryan Crosby began his tenure as WSL commander-in-chief. Aside from a brief in-person San Clemente press conference, we’ve seen and heard very little from the former video game mogul — which is probably a good sign.

Through the Juul wireless, we’ve learned that his arrival marked a concerted shift away from pursuing the non-endemic ‘unicorn’ and towards engaging with surfing’s iodized nucleus. Increasingly candid commentary and dissenting broadcast opinions have begun to mark this change, but the 2025 WSL schedule looks to be the most concrete step towards a more core-focused dream tour. 

“We’ve built this schedule to include more events and feature a variety of breaks,” said Crosby. “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.”

Yes, the Final Five remains, but you’d be hard pressed to be disappointed with the chosen venues. 

The schedule, as released today:

2025 WSL Championship Tour Schedule 

• Stop No. 1 – Banzai Pipeline, Hawaii, USA: January 27 – February 8
• Stop No. 2 – Surf Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE: February 14 – 16
• Stop No. 3 – Peniche, Portugal: March 15 – 25
• Stop No. 4 – Punta Roca, El Salvador: April 2 – 12
• Stop No. 5 – Bells Beach, Victoria, Australia: April 18 – 28
• Stop No. 6 – Snapper Rocks, Queensland, Australia: May 3 – 13
• Stop No. 7 – Margaret River, Western Australia, Australia: May 17 – 27
  Mid-Year Cut
• Stop No. 8 – Lower Trestles, San Clemente, Calif., USA: June 9 – 17
• Stop No. 9 – Saquarema, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: June 21 – 29
• Stop No. 10 – Jeffreys Bay, South Africa: July 11 – 20
• Stop No. 11 – Teahupo’o, Tahiti, French Polynesia: August 7 – 16
• Stop No. 12 – WSL Finals – Cloudbreak, Fiji: August 27 – September 4

There are a few obvious differences between this schedule and that of years past.

Firstly, the Mid-Year cut will come after the seventh event, instead of the fifth. For tour rookies, this will be a massive relief.

Less experienced CTers will have more time to get settled into the frantic rhythm of the top level, and it appears that the pre-cut venues are more diverse and approachable than they have been in previous years.

With Abu Dhabi replacing Sunset, and Snapper + Punta Roca slipping in before the proverbial guillotine, a few quality small-wave performances should be enough to carry surfers to the back half of the season, as opposed to the strictly heavy/deep water chops required in 2023/’24. 

Of course, anyone standing with their right foot forward will be quick to note the glaring absence of lefts before the mid-year cut. At this point though, complaining about it feels like trying to nail jelly to a wall. 

If you count Lowers and Abu Dhabi (which is being generous) only 4 of the 11 regular season stops (36%) feature proper lefts, with only 2 of the 7 pre-cut events providing equal opportunity to frontside goofs. 

Maybe the WSL is just adjusting for the fact that only 33% of the current Challenger Series top 15 are goofy*. Or maybe that tourism cashflow is just too damn good. 

Speaking of which, seven total events will be carried out in partnership with government support.

According to ABC News Australia, the WSL has penned a four-year deal with the City of Gold Coast and Tourism and Events Queensland, meaning Snapper — like Bells and Margaret River — will be on Tour until 2028 at least.

As we know, Punta Roca and Abu Dhabi are both made possible because of the governmental obsessions with cryptocurrency and petroleum, respectively.

And, in September 2023, the WSL announced they had secured a three-year partnership with the Fijian government, which will see the event on the tour schedule until 2026 at the least. 

Looking through historical CT schedules, 2006 still stands as possibly the best year in the history of the Dream Tour. The schedule consisted of Snapper, Bells, Tahiti, Fiji, the legendary Mexico Search event, J-Bay, Trestles, France, Mundaka, Brazil, and Pipe.

The 2025 Championship Tour shares eight stops with this mythical ASP schedule — resembling as close to a true dream tour as we’ve ever seen under WSL (Ziff) ownership. 

It’s also the busiest schedule we’ve ever seen under WSL ownership, with 12 events total and little more than a week and a half between any of the events. In fact, the only significant time off will be between Abu Dhabi and Peniche, with about a month gap. 

This rapid cadence will be great for surf fans, likely exhausting for surfers — especially those at the upper end of the rankings, who will spend 8 months looking directly towards Finals Day. It’s likely many of them will not see their homes for months at a time.

Barring those with galeophobia, everyone will be pleased with the return of J-Bay. Abu Dhabi’s inclusion is more polarizing.

Historically, the Surf Ranch Pro has been the most maligned event on the World Tour, with complaints regularly pouring from keyboards at even the slightest notion of the artificial Dream Tour stop. While it’s not necessarily our favorite event to watch either, we’d like to provide a counterargument.

In 2024, wavepools are an undeniable part of surfing and its evolution. Not only is it completely justifiable to base 9% of a surfer’s overall ranking on an event in artificial waves — it would be archaic and obstinate not to.

Plus, that Gulf State money probably helps keep the rest of the competitive surfing machine *ahem* well-oiled.

So don’t watch if you’re opposed — the time zone is pretty horrible for North America and Australia anyway — but if having Abu Dhabi means we can have J-Bay back (a historically less profitable event), we’re cool with it.

Also, when you look at the past champions of these wavepool events, it’s clear that they’re selecting for the world’s most technically gifted surfers. Who can fault that?

We say let them eat chlorine (with a pinch of salt).

*This tracks with our audience survey statistics of goof (34%) vs regular (66%) representation in surfing