WSL season opens at Bells Beach

The World Surf League opened its 2026 Championship Tour at Bells Beach on April 1 and finished on April 11 with a new season-long points race already in effect. (worldsurfleague.com) Bells Beach in Victoria, Australia was Stop No. 1 of a 12-event tour, and it opened the World Tour for the first time in 25 years during the circuit’s 50th season. (worldsurfleague.com) Gabriela Bryan of Hawaii and Miguel Pupo of Brazil won the event on April 11, while reigning world champions Molly Picklum and Yago Dora finished runner-up. The World Surf League’s rankings page listed Bryan and Pupo on 10,000 points after Bells, with Picklum and Dora on 7,800. (worldsurfleague.com) The format change is simple: the 2026 world titles are no longer decided by a one-day finals event. The World Surf League said final rankings will come from each surfer’s best nine results across all 12 stops. (worldsurfleague.com) That makes Bells more than an opener. The points earned there now count directly toward the year-end title chase that ends at Pipeline in December, instead of feeding into a separate finals showdown. (worldsurfleague.com) The tour still cuts down before the end of the year, but later than before. The World Surf League said the field stays at 36 men and 24 women through nine regular-season events, then narrows to 24 men and 16 women for Abu Dhabi and Portugal before the full starting fields return for the Pipe Masters. (worldsurfleague.com) Pipeline now carries extra weight in the standings. The World Surf League said the final event offers 15,000 points, or 50 percent more than a standard stop, and the top eight surfers in each division heading into Pipeline get advanced seeding. (worldsurfleague.com) Bells also opened a season with a larger women’s field and a revised event format. The World Surf League said 2026 includes an expanded women’s roster and “higher stakes from day one,” with the non-elimination round removed from the Championship Tour structure announced for the year. (worldsurfleague.com; worldsurfleague.com) The next stop is the Western Australia Margaret River Pro, scheduled for April 17 to 27, the second leg of the three-event Australian swing that began at Bells. The standings now move with the tour from event to event, which is exactly what the World Surf League set out to restore in 2026. (worldsurfleague.com; worldsurfleague.com)