Five surfers, five waves, five awesome clips. Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
The 2025-2026 Big Wave Challenge is here, and the clips are rolling in. It’s an interesting concept, the Big Wave Challenge.
Since big wave events are, frankly, extremely boring to watch for the vast majority of the event, it’s a new way to do it. Instead of watching hours of tiny heads bobbing around until one of those heads gets a massive wave, competitors simply film themselves on a variety of waves around the world, upload the footage, and then, at the end of the season, the footage is judged.
There are a pile of entries, but in the interest of pandering to the internet’s short attention span, we’ve chosen five surfers surfing five different big waves. The first:
Natxo Gonzalez at Mullaghmore
Natxo, the big wave legend from the Basque Country, headed to Ireland to score giant Mullaghmore on December 21, 2025.
Eric Nicholson at Maverick’s
San Diego’s Eric Nicholson made the trip north to Half Moon Bay, California in early November, 2025. He did it for good reason, and you can see that reason here. It wasn’t exactly how he expected things to go, but you can’t expect anything at Maverick’s.
Ian Pegoraro at Jaws
Ian Pegoraro, who hails from Haiku, Hawaii, knows Jaws pretty well. And on January 11, 2026, he rang in the New Year with this gem of a bomb.
Naiki Vaast at Teahupo’o
Naiki Vaast is Tahitian, but even the most experienced Teahupo’o surfers can still find waves that surprise them. And this wave of Vaast’s on August 5, 2026 did just that. In a good way.
Jojo Roper at Nazaré
Jojo Roper loves big waves more than just about anything else. The San Diego native made the trip to Portugal in April, 2026, to get towed into this absolute monster.
