Cloud 9 Opens Saturday: The Draw, the Wildcards and the Title Race

A week ago the Championship Tour was in Peniche. Now its surfers are paddling out in front of our boardwalk, and if you walk down to the reef this afternoon you will see most of them. The Philippines Pro, the first Championship Tour event ever held in the Philippines, opens its waiting period on Saturday. Here is where the season stands, who surfs whom, and the videos worth watching before the horn.

The tour is already in the water

Some of them did not wait for training day. Samuel Pupo and Cole Houshmand lost in Round 1 in Portugal, took the first flight out of Peniche and caught an eight-foot swell here, then spent five days learning the reef with the Myers Surf Mentorship crew filming. Gabs Batallones has just posted an uncut October session of four-foot, offshore Cloud 9 with Houshmand, Miguel Pupo, Jayuard Alciso and Noah Arkfeld in the line-up. Both are worth watching if you want to see what the wave is doing this week.

Portugal set the table

The first postseason stop ended at Supertubos on 23 October in heavy barrels. Griffin Colapinto beat Gabriel Medina 17.60 to 16.77 in the men's final, after knocking out the world No. 1, Yago Dora, in the semis; it made him the first surfer to win the Rip Curl Pro Portugal three times. Medina had beaten Italo Ferreira to get there.

Molly Picklum beat Caitlin Simmers 13.33 to 12.84 in the women's final. It was the reigning world champion's first win of 2026 and her second Portugal title in a row, and it put her back in the yellow leader's jersey for the first time since Bells. She was also the surfer who ended Erin Brooks's fifteen-heat winning streak.

The title race

Six men are within 6,350 points of each other. Yago Dora leads on 48,865, ahead of Italo Ferreira (46,015), Colapinto (43,695), Medina (43,210), Miguel Pupo (42,770) and Leonardo Fioravanti (42,515). Four of the six are Brazilian. Ethan Ewing and Kanoa Igarashi complete the top eight, the seeds who skip Round 1 here.

The women's race is tighter at the top: Picklum on 48,950, Carissa Moore 1,885 behind, then Gabriela Bryan (44,865), Erin Brooks (42,745) and Sawyer Lindblad (42,055). Cloud 9 is the second-last event of the year. After it there is only Pipeline, from 8 to 20 December.

The draw

The men's field is 24: the top eight wait in Round 2 and the other sixteen, including the two Filipino wildcards, surf Round 1 head to head. The women's 16 go straight into a knockout. Every heat is two surfers, best two waves.

Men, Round 1

• Heat 1: Connor O'Leary v Callum Robson (winner meets Yago Dora)
• Heat 2: Marco Mignot v Seth Moniz (winner meets Italo Ferreira)
• Heat 3: Cole Houshmand v Filipe Toledo (winner meets Griffin Colapinto)
• Heat 4: Liam O'Brien v João Chianca (winner meets Gabriel Medina)
• Heat 5: Jack Robinson v Bronson Meydi (winner meets Miguel Pupo)
• Heat 6: George Pittar v Noah Arkfeld (winner meets Leonardo Fioravanti)
• Heat 7: Samuel Pupo v John Mark Tokong (winner meets Ethan Ewing)
• Heat 8: Kauli Vaast v Jayuard Alciso (winner meets Kanoa Igarashi)

Women, Round 1

• Heat 1: Caitlin Simmers v Caroline Marks
• Heat 2: Gabriela Bryan v Yolanda Hopkins
• Heat 3: Luana Silva v Bettylou Sakura Johnson
• Heat 4: Carissa Moore v Sierra Kerr
• Heat 5: Molly Picklum v Mara Lopez
• Heat 6: Lakey Peterson v Isabella Nichols
• Heat 7: Erin Brooks v Tyler Wright
• Heat 8: Sawyer Lindblad v Nadia Erostarbe

The heat to circle on the women's side is Moore against Sierra Kerr in Heat 4: the world No. 2 against a wildcard who has already won a contest on this reef. On the men's side, Filipe Toledo, who only just made the postseason cut, draws Cole Houshmand, who has been surfing Cloud 9 for over a week. The full bracket, with scores and winners filled in as the heats finish, is on our live bracket page.

Three Filipinos at home

John Mark "Marama" Tokong won the Siargao International Surfing Cup on this reef in 2015, 2019, 2022 and 2023, and was given his wildcard back in July. He called it one of his biggest dreams, and said he would love to surf against Medina or Ferreira. He gets Samuel Pupo first, who has spent the past week learning the wave Tokong grew up on. Win that, and Ethan Ewing is waiting.

Jayuard Alciso came through the Cloud 9 trials a month after winning bronze at the Asian Games, the Philippines' first surfing medal at the Games. He opens against France's Kauli Vaast, the Olympic champion from Teahupo'o, and the winner meets Kanoa Igarashi, who won Asian Games gold in the same competition.

Mara Lopez is a teenager who won the women's open at the Mayor Jaime Plaza Rusillon Cloud 9 Memorial Surfing Cup on this reef earlier in October, and then the trials. Her reward is the hardest draw in the event: Molly Picklum, in the yellow jersey.

So the first Championship Tour event in the Philippines starts with three Filipinos in the draw.

The other wildcards and the replacements

Sierra Kerr, 19, from the Gold Coast, is the second women's wildcard. She won the 2023 World Junior Championship, won a Qualifying Series event at Cloud 9 in 2024, and has already qualified for next year's Championship Tour. She told Gold Coast Magazine that Cloud 9 had immediately become one of her favourite places to compete.

Two men from the top 22 are out: Morgan Cibilic and Jake Marshall. Their places go to Noah Arkfeld of the United States and Bronson Meydi of Indonesia, who meet George Pittar and Jack Robinson in Round 1.

What the previews are saying

The LAGO Podcast's preview argues that the reef is harder than it looks and that the wildcards could cause real trouble for the tour surfers. Pro Surf Media's fantasy preview goes through the wave, the forecast and the goofy-foot versus natural-foot numbers. PTV has been covering the arrival of the tour on the national news.

If you are coming to watch

• Training days are Thursday 29 and Friday 30 October, 7:00 am to 3:30 pm. The opening party is a Halloween-themed night at Loka Bar on Saturday 31 October.
• Competition runs 7:00 am to 5:00 pm on days the WSL calls ON. The call is made each morning, and the waiting period ends on Tuesday 10 November.
• On competition days the Cloud 9 boardwalk out to the tower is closed to spectators, and Quicksilver is restricted because it sits so close to the contest wave.
• No drones, no dogs (registered assistance dogs excepted) and no boats in the exclusion zone. Single-use plastics are banned on site.
• The fan zone has official merchandise from Kudo Surf, Loka Bar, Bonsoy Cafe, Pure Foods food trucks, and stands from the Philippine Sports Commission and Smart.
• The live broadcast is on WorldSurfLeague.com; the WSL app sends heat alerts.

For where to watch, where to surf while the main peak is closed and how to get around, read our visitor guide and where to surf during the contest.

The reef, then and now

The tower that the judges will sit in this week is a rebuild; the story of how it came back is in The Towers Are Back.

The athletes in these photos were shot at other events over the years; the shots of Cloud 9 itself are the boardwalk and towers you will be standing on.

Sources

• World Surf League: Philippines Pro event page, heat draw, event guide, Picklum back at No. 1, rankings update, Portugal results, men's and women's rankings
• Rip Curl: Molly Picklum wins the 2026 Rip Curl Pro Portugal
• Sports Bytes Philippines: Marama Tokong gets coveted WSL wildcard
• The Philippine Star: 3 Pinoys in WSL Siargao event
• Inquirer Sports: After Asiad bronze, Alciso joins WSL Championship Tour in Siargao
• Gold Coast Magazine: Sierra Kerr secures event wildcard for Philippines Pro
• Duke Surf: Kerr, Mara López, Arkfeld, Meydi and Alciso enter the Philippines CT
• Videos play from YouTube and belong to their channels. Photos are from Wikimedia Commons under the licences credited under each one.

Tagged: philippines-procloud-9wsl

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