The Field Is Set: Who Surfs Cloud 9 in November
Trestles closed the regular season. The top 22 men and top 14 women, plus wildcards, go through Portugal to Siargao. And no, there is no QS at Cloud 9 in October.
The last event of the Championship Tour's regular season finished at Lower Trestles in California on 19 September, and with it the list of surfers who will be paddling out in front of our boardwalk next month stopped being a guess. Here is who is coming, how they got here, and one calendar mix-up worth clearing up before you book anything.
How Trestles settled it
The Lexus Trestles Pro ran its finals in four-to-five-foot surf. Erin Brooks, the 19-year-old Canadian, beat Gabriela Bryan 13.00 to 11.90 for her third Championship Tour win in a row. Only two surfers had done that before: Stephanie Gilmore in 2008 and Carissa Moore across 2014 and 2015. Weeks earlier Brooks had been worrying about requalifying. She now goes into the postseason ranked fifth.
The men's final went to Miguel Pupo, who beat Kanoa Igarashi 14.77 to 14.40. It was the Brazilian's second win of the year, after Bells, and he said afterwards that it had taken him fourteen years to get the first one.
Who is coming
After nine events, the men's rankings are led by Yago Dora, ahead of Leonardo Fioravanti, Italo Ferreira, Miguel Pupo and Gabriel Medina. Four of the top five are Brazilian. Griffin Colapinto, Kanoa Igarashi and Ethan Ewing round out the top eight, and Filipe Toledo and Jake Marshall squeezed in at 21st and 22nd, the last two places above the line.
On the women's side Gabriela Bryan leads Carissa Moore by just 545 points, with Sawyer Lindblad, Molly Picklum, Erin Brooks and Luana Silva close behind, and Caitlin Simmers and Lakey Peterson in the top eight. Yolanda Hopkins holds the last place at 14th. Anat Lelior, in 15th, is the first surfer out.
The rest of the field is wildcards. John Mark Tokong, who grew up surfing this reef and has won at Cloud 9 four times, is already confirmed. A Philippines Pro CT Trials event at Cloud 9, held before the main competition, will add a men's and a women's wildcard, which would make this the first time three Filipinos have surfed at this level at home. The Trials date has not been announced yet. We will post it as soon as it is.
The calendar, correctly
- MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal, Peniche: 16 to 25 October
- Philippines Pro, Cloud 9: 31 October to 10 November
- Pipe Masters, Oahu: 8 to 20 December
A number of event sites and accommodation blogs still list a "Siargao International Surfing Cup QS 6000" at Cloud 9 from 16 to 25 October. That contest no longer exists in that form. When the World Surf League promoted the event to the Championship Tour in July, the Siargao Cup became the Philippines Pro and moved to the November window, and the league's 2026 calendar has no Philippine QS. The 16 to 25 October dates belong to Portugal.
If you booked a trip in mid-October expecting a contest, you have not lost anything. You have a fortnight of late-habagat Cloud 9 without a competition area, while most of the world's best surfers are on the other side of the planet. There are worse outcomes.
What a smaller field means for watching
Twenty-four men and sixteen women is a much shorter draw than a regular-season event, so there are fewer heats to run and the organisers need fewer good days inside the window to finish. That makes the call each morning more about quality than quantity: expect the horn on the best days, and lay days on the rest.
For the title race the numbers are tight enough that every heat here matters. Bryan and Moore are separated by less than one heat win, Brooks is surfing the best she ever has, and Igarashi arrives straight from winning Asian Games gold in Japan, where he beat one of our local surfers in the semifinal.
The practical advice has not changed. Book rooms, flights into Sayak and board rental now, treat the dates as a window rather than a schedule, and come for several days. If the main peak is closed, the rest of the island will be quieter than usual.
We are a hundred metres from the boardwalk. Come by during the waiting period and we will tell you whether the horn is likely to go tomorrow.
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