Marco Mignot of France. Photo by Daniel Smorigo//World Surf League
There’s going to be a new kind of Brazilian storm on the Championship Tour in 2025. Of the 10 surfers who qualified for the CT via the 2024 Challenger Series, six are waving Brazilian flags. That includes returns from the Pupo brothers and Deivid Silva after missing last year’s cut. Add in Filipe Toledo’s and Joao Chianca’s season wildcards and just over 30 percent of the men’s CT roster will be Brazilian surfers — a slight bump over last year.
Here’s a quick look at all 10 surfers who got the call up to the bigs.
Who Qualified Before the Saquarema Pro?
Three men qualified for the CT by the end of the Ericeira Pro: Samuel Pupo, Ian Gouveia, and Alejo Muniz.
For Pupo, it rounded out a roller coaster competitive year in which he had the unfortunate task of eliminating his brother, Miguel, from the CT and then being relegated himself, then winning a CS event in Portugal to punch his ticket back up to the tour. Gouveia and Muniz, meanwhile, will be a couple of feel-good stories on early 2025 CT broadcasts. Both surfers are making returns to the CT after extended departures. For Gouveia, that almost meant throwing in the towel on competitive surfing altogether if things didn’t go well this year. The Brazilian admitted 2024 was going to be his last hoorah so he could enjoy freesurfing and family, accepting that maybe it was time to hang them up. Then he caught a hot streak early in the year and ended up qualifying.
Who Earned Qualification in Brazil This Week?
Marco Mignot
France’s Marco Mignot made one of the biggest jumps in the rankings at the last possible minute. He was on the outside looking in at number 13 and needed to at least make the semis in order to make the cut. He went out and won the whole thing. It’s been a solid swing for Mignot, who hadn’t won a CS event before and spent three and a half years between 2019 and early 2023 without a win on the QS. The win in Brazil marked his third at the QS and CS level in a little over a year.
Deivid Silva
Deivid Silva outdid Marco Mignot in the leaderboard leapfrog game in Brazil. The CT veteran came home needing to slide up six spots in order to qualify, which equated to needing an appearance in the final or miss the CT altogether. Silva made that final and will get a swing at his fifth full season on the Championship Tour in 2025.
Miguel Pupo
Miguel Pupo wasn’t guaranteed qualification coming into Brazil but in the flurry of surfers who had a shot, his was one of the smoothest. He returns with 101 Championship Tour events under his belt, dating back to Kelly Slater’s last world title when Miguel was just a teenager.
Joel Vaughan
From an experienced vet to a true rookie, Joel Vaughan will be one of two CT rookies in 2025 who’s never competed in an event at that level. No wildcards on his resume but a solid progression up the Challenger Series standings the past few years put him in this position. In 2023, the Australian was far out of the picture at 29th in the Challenger Series rankings and in 2022 he was 28th.
George Pittar
George Pittar shook some things up before the Challenger Series season kicked off this year. As a wildcard at Bells and Margaret River, Pittar got his first CT reps. Bells came and went for the (then) 20-year old without much noise but in WA and a full roster of stressed-out CT vets facing relegation, Pittar put on a show. He knocked a hot Cole Houshmand out fresh off of his win at Bells. He put up nine-point rides in consecutive heats to beat Liam O’Brien and then Griffin Colapinto in the quarterfinal, and then he ran into John John Florence in full John John Florence form, who posted a 10 in their semifinal heat and backed that up with another excellent score.
A full season of solid results at the CT level is one thing, but George Pittar has at least shown he can catch fire at the high level.
Edgard Groggia
Edgard Groggia is the newest addition to the CT’s Brazilian storm and like Joel Vaughan, he’ll be making the jump without any CT heats under his belt. At 28 years old, he is a lesser-known competitor compared to some of his fellow countrymen. Unlike a lot of the other Brazilians on tour who started popping up on radars at an early age, Groggia didn’t even jump into the QS grind until 2020 when he turned 24 years old and then poof, the world shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was in the Challenger Series the next year and is now jumping up to the CT with fewer than 50 QS and CS events under his belt. That is a helluva rocket ride up the ranks.
Jackson Bunch
Jackson Bunch was a huge Marco Mignot fan in Brazil. During the quarterfinal of the Saquarema Pro, Bunch needed Mignot to send American Levi Slawson home in order to snag the final spot on the 2025 Championship Tour and he got just that. The final gap between Bunch and number 11 in the final season standings (Alan Cleland): 320 points.
The Maui native now gets to live out a dream that’s been coming for a long time. Bunch got going on the QS at just 15-years old and after two seasons on the Challenger Series, this year was his first in solid contention for a CT spot as the season closed.
“I can’t wait to go into pipe wearing my name on my back,” he said after qualifying.
Hell yeah.
