The layback is back! Photo: Thiago Diz//World Surf League
The 2026 WSL Championship Tour just got a lot more intriguing. The five-time world champion Carissa Moore announced that she’ll return to competition full time after taking a two-year break from the tour, during which time she gave birth to her first child.
“To put my jersey back on after having a baby feels like such a win,” Moore wrote on Instagram. “Competing at the highest level of surfing is something I don’t take for granted and I’m so grateful to be feeling healthy and reinvigorated.”
“I want my journey to show my daughter, and hopefully other women, that we can do anything,” she added. “We can keep chasing our dreams, even as life evolves. I’m looking forward to sharing this next chapter with her and experiencing it together as a family.”
Moore last competed in the opening event of the 2024 season at Pipeline where she placed 17th. She then announced that she was going to step away from the tour, careful not to call it a retirement. She participated in the Paris 2024 Olympics in Tahiti, later revealing that she achieved her fifth place finish while surfing pregnant.
In February of this year, Moore gave birth to her daughter Olena Lililehua Untermann. When Moore returns to the first stop of the 2026 tour in April at Bells Beach, Australia, she’ll be just over a year removed from giving birth.
In 2026, the tour will revert to an overall points-based ranking to determine world titles, as opposed to the one-day Final 5 format used to crown champions from 2021 to 2025. Moore was perhaps the surfer most negatively affected by the new format, twice missing out on the world title (2022 and 2023) when she came into the finals leading the ranking.
Perhaps the new format played a factor in Moore’s return. Pipeline, a wave that she has excelled in with a win and two runner-up finishes, will be weighted with 1.5 times the points, catering to Moore’s proficiency in heavy surf.
