Oscar Langburne has had a year. A new deal with Rip Curl was followed by a knee injury that sidelined him for a solid chunk of 2025. If the timing of those two things doesn’t sound frustrating enough, the 22-year-old had a few trips planned for that window of time that were clearly just not meant to be.
“Things could be a lot worse,” he told me. Langburne says he filled the downtime with reading up on a lot of things that interest him and checking out new music — enough to get him through to the other side when he finally could get back in the water and on the road. His first trip: Indo.
His new edit, Ever Changing Moods, came from that trip. Suffice to say, it’s good to see a talent like Oscar Langburne back in the water.
Oscar Langburne. Photo: @harrydott
Was this trip your first run back in the water, or had you been recovered and surfing for a while before going to Indo?
I’d had about a week or two surfing in Australia before I left for Indo, and was just really nervous about the knee. First proper trip was to Sumatra, and I was just feeling tentative and out of rhythm. Got dengue fever there, and that put me out again for a couple of weeks. So, not the best start.
So, how’s that new partnership going for you? How did it come about?
Rip Curl has been great. They’ve backed me to do my thing and have been really understanding during the few months injured. Some friends in Bali at Onboard Store mentioned me to the Rip Curl crew in Indo, and it just went from there.
You’ve seen some sponsor changes in recent years. Has that been stressful, or just trying to find the right match for yourself and your career?
A combination of everything, really. I finished up with RVCA when a lot of the team and crew were getting culled. So I was fortunate and stoked that I landed with Rip Curl soon after that went down.
They’ve always been a roots company who are involved in cool shit. Whether it’s the Padang comp, the heritage around the Torquay zone, The Search trips, backing people from comp to freesurf. They’ve got a real genuine range of interest in surfing, and that was definitely really attractive.
