Sally Fitzgibbons. Photo: WSL
The competition window for the WSL’s Pipe Challenger opens on Thursday, January 29. The contest marks the final stretch of the 2025-2026 Challenger Series slate with just two surfers, Yolanda Hopkins and Tya Zebrowski, having qualified for the upcoming Championship Tour. That means 10 men and five women will still earn spots on the Dream Tour between now and the end of the Newcastle SURFEST (in a weird anomaly, the Newcastle event starts and finishes the 2025-2026 Challenger Series). But before the SURFEST event even kicks off in March there are 11 surfers who can get that qualification out of the way based on their results over the next week and a half.
Here are the 11 surfers with a chance to qualify for the 2026 CT at Pipeline.
Make the Semifinal: Eli Hanneman
Eli Hanneman. Photo by Matt Dunbar//World Surf League
Eli Hanneman has the lowest bar to clear thanks to big results in the past two CS events — a third place at the Ericeira Pro and a second at the Saquerema Pro. That bar is still pretty high though, as Hanneman has to make the semifinal in a massive field that includes CTers Baron Mamiya, Griffin Colapinto, and Leo Fioravanti.
Hanneman qualified for the 2024 CT via the Challenger Series and has surfed in the Pipe Pro to kick off the past two CT seasons. The 2024 event was his first appearance as a full-time member on the elite tour, where he earned an equal 17th and fell off the CT at the mid-year cut. Hanneman was a wildcard in last year’s Pipe Pro and earned an equal 33rd.
Make the Final: Samuel Pupo, Luke Thompson, and Sally Fitzgibbons
Samuel Pupo and Sally Fitzgibbons are both also looking for returns to the Championship Tour and could accomplish that by making it to the final.
Pupo’s coming off a win at the Saquerema Pro that thrust him into a solid position for qualification. Even without making the final he’ll be within reach of his fifth season on the Championship Tour. Meanwhile, Sally “Fitz” would complete another massive comeback and add to an already stellar CT career. She first stepped onto the Dream Tour stage in 2010, and although she hasn’t had a CT win since 2021, she showed last year that she still has plenty in the tank when she finished runner-up to Bettylou Sakura Johnson at Bells.
Back to the men’s side, Luke Thompson can qualify for a rookie CT campaign at Pipe. He’s had two CT wildcard appearances at J-Bay (2022 and 2025) and celebrated his best CS result in 2025, winning the Balito Pro early in this season.
Earn an Equal 3rd: George Pittar, Kauli Vaast
George Pittar has never won a CS event but he’s placed third or higher twice this season and once in 2024. At the Championship Tour level as a rookie last year, Pittar came out of the gates hot with a fifth place finish at Pipe. The quarterfinal loss in that event came to Leo Fioravanti, one of those three dangerous CTers in this year’s Pipe Challenger field.
Vaast, meanwhile, is enjoying his best season on the Challenger Series. The Olympic gold medalist finished in second place at the 2025 Newcastle Surfest and nabbed a win last October at the Ericeira Pro.
Earn 2nd Place: Oscar Berry and Mateus Herdy
Oscar Berry and Mateus Herdy both have a slightly higher bar to reach at Pipe for qualification but they’ve both put together “quiet” but solid seasons so far. Herdy comes to the North Shore after recording an equal 25th at the Saquerema Pro, the lowest result either surfer has turned in this entire season. Berry’s worst result, meanwhile, was an equal 17th at the Newcastle SURFEST when the 2025 CS season kicked off in June.
Neither surfer has a win to their name this year but outside of those two results they haven’t finished lower than equal ninth either. Those are solid, steady results to piece together at the CS level, where the field of competitors at the beginning of each event is three-times the size of the CT.
Most of the surfers on this list have been propelled by singular big results thrusting them into top-ten spots of their respective rankings, but Berry and Herdy may be the safest bet(s) to reach the results they need at Pipe.
Win the Whole Thing: Francisck Vaselko, Nadia Erostarbe, and Jacob Willcox
The win-and-you’re-in storyline is always the most exciting to keep tabs on at events like this. Even when surf fans hated the CT’s mid-year cut, the surfers who needed to take it all home to secure their spots on tour were the most talked about on broadcasts. This event, of course, isn’t as crucial because all surfers will have one more swing at qualification no matter what result they produce at Pipe.
These three surfers are all sitting in similar situations, interestingly. Willcox and Veselko both opened up the CS season by winning the Newcastle Surfest. Erostarbe collected her sole win of the season at the next stop, the Ballito Pro. Since then, the trio have all done enough to keep themselves in the mix and hold onto those early rankings leads. Willcox, whose 2024 season was his only year on the CT, could likely help himself out the most with a big result at Pipe, even if he comes up short of the win. He fell in the Round of 64 in the past two events which has pushed him down significantly on the rankings leaderboard, so a fresh injection of points can go a long way this week.
