The WQS Is So Fucking Back! 

The ASP/WSL World Qualifying Series was arguably our sport, if not our entire culture’s, most beautiful tradition, and may it rest in peace. 

In the last year it ran, 2019, the men’s tour held 62 stops in 21 different countries (42 stops, 18 countries for the gals). Any surfer, from anywhere, could get into any event if their seed was high enough. 

This meant throngs of young and often poorly behaved surfers would breifly invade random coastal towns around the world. It resulted in some of the best and worst times of people’s lives. On one hand, you had to confront the cruel reality of spending two months’ worth of surf camp wages to lose first fucking heat in shit waves to someone with a style that makes the act of riding a wave look like a war crime. 

On the other hand, and particularly in hindsight, you got to travel to a new place, stay with friends, surf, and enjoy life irresponsibly before eventually realizing you’re not gonna beat that war crimes surfer and having to get a real, and way less fun, job. 

The WQS died when the WSL switched to a three-tier system after COVID in 2021. But now, it’s back — kind of. 

We are about to witness the first-ever CS 6000 International in Pantín, out there on the northwestern corner of Spain, in a land called Galicia. And the heat draw is, frankly, fucked up. Check it out here — and note that surfers are seeded as far as the Round of 64.

You’ve got these former (and if they’re here, hopeful future CT surfers): Sophie McCulloch, India Robinson, Teresa Bonvalot, Ian Gentil, Deivid Silva, Ian Gouveia, Edgard Groggia, Frederico Morais, Maxime Huscenot, and Jackson Bunch.

Like Jackson, Dimitri Poulos of Surf100 fame will be there. And Levi Slawson, Sam Piter, Shion Crawford, Sierra Kerr, and Sky Brown, who you’ve seen in Stab High. And an entire field of Europe’s best competitive surfers — which includes a lot of handy surfers you may or may not know, but we’ll shout out João Mendonça’s SEOTY edit here. 

So, how does this work? There are five CS events in 2026, and surfers keep four results. But they can also surf in QS 6000 International Events and, if they get a big result, have the points count as one of their four CS results. For context, winning a CS gets you 10,000 points. Second is 7800, and third is 6085. A third is still a massive result, so you can see the appeal of showing up at QS 6000. Sierra Kerr even turned down a Fiji wildcard to be here.

There will be five QS 6000 International events this year. Pantin, Matosinhos, Saquarema, Cloud 9, and Taiwan. CS surfers can only use one QS 6000 International result in their CS tally — so if you get a good result in one, there’s really no point in doing the rest. And, international surfers who are not yet on the CS can have the points they collect in the International events count toward their home region’s ranking to get on the CS next year.

What does this mean? Say Hayden Rogers wins. He can choose to use those 6000 points for his CS ranking, or his North American QS ranking. Given that he already has a big result under his belt from the US Open, the CS is an obvious choice.

For the international surfers, the appeal of a Euro trip is made juicier by another CS 6000 International starting the week after, three and a half hours away at Matosinhos, in the north of Portugal. Some might even go full Euro lord and stay for the Challenger, which runs in early October. 

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. I recently ran into Afonso Antunes, a well-mannered kid, second-generation pro surfer, and former event winner in Pantìn. “Our only 6000 events in Europe are open to International surfers, which isn’t the case in any other region,” he told me. “That’s not ideal, but obviously, the goal is to compete on the CT one day — and you have to beat all these guys anyway to do that.” 

As Mikey C can tell you, making a QS heat is hard. It’s even harder when Jackson Bunch is in your heat, which is the case for the poor bastards in Heat 1 of the Round of 144. 

Now, are you meant to care about this enough to devote some of your precious and finite attention to it? Especially at the same time that a (probably false alarm, statistically speaking) Code Red swell is on its way to Fiji while the comp is on? 

Well, I’ve never surfed Cloudbreak, but if I were to bend over and touch my toes right now, it’d result in a small puddle of salt water from a beachie that kicked my ass this morning. 

There can be something nice about watching good surfers in waves that hit a little closer to home.

It starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday.