Peniche 2026: Colapinto and Picklum win, and what the swell was doing on each day

25 October 2026

The 2026 MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal finished on Friday 23 October, two days before the end of its window (16 to 25 October). Griffin Colapinto won the men’s event against Gabriel Medina, his third win at Supertubos. Molly Picklum beat Caity Simmers in the women’s final and left Peniche in the yellow leader’s jersey. The results below come from the WSL’s own reports and from RTP and A Bola; the scores are the WSL’s.

The finals

Medina started the men’s final in front. Colapinto answered with an 8.17, Medina came back with an 8.57 and an 8.20, and Colapinto’s last wave, a 9.43, decided it. Adding each surfer’s two best waves gives 17.60 to 16.77 (our sum of the WSL’s wave scores). The WSL has put the heat forward for heat of the year. In the semifinals Medina beat Italo Ferreira, and Colapinto beat the reigning world champion Yago Dora.

The women’s final came down to the last minutes. Picklum’s 7.83 put her ahead; Simmers needed a 7.17 and her last wave scored 6.67. On Thursday 22 October Simmers had beaten Bettylou Sakura Johnson and Picklum had beaten Lakey Peterson in the semifinals.

How the Portuguese surfers did

• Teresa Bonvalot beat the world number one, Gabriela Bryan, on the opening day (11.40 to 10.93), then lost her quarterfinal to Lakey Peterson (10.00 to 5.10) and finished fifth.
• Francisca Veselko beat Sawyer Lindblad (8.54 to 7.90) and went out to Bettylou Sakura Johnson in a quarterfinal on Saturday 17 October.
• Guilherme Ribeiro, in his first Championship Tour event on an invitation from the organisers, beat Kanoa Igarashi 10.33 to 5.00 and met Italo Ferreira in the quarterfinals; Italo went through.
• Yolanda Hopkins scored a 9.00, the best single wave by a woman on the opening day, but lost to Picklum 15.74 to 11.10.
• Frederico Morais lost to Ethan Ewing in round two, 15.73 to 11.17.

Day by day: the WSL calls and the swell

Our contest page read the WSL status line every few minutes and kept every change. Next to each day is our model’s open-sea swell and wind at Supertubos in the hours that mattered. These are model figures, not buoy readings. Supertubos faces south-west, so a north-east wind is offshore and a north wind blows across it.

• Fri 16: ran (opening round and round two). 1.9 m at 10 s from the west-north-west, north-north-east wind at 20 to 25 km/h.
• Sat 17: ran (the first women’s quarterfinals). 2.0 to 2.2 m at 8 to 9 s from the north-west, north-north-west wind at 16 to 18 km/h.
• Sun 18: off at the 9:00 call, with an Expression Session at 12:00 instead. 1.6 to 2.0 m at 8 s.
• Mon 19: no call; the next one was set for Tuesday at 7:45. 1.3 to 1.5 m at 7 s.
• Tue 20: on hold from 7:45 with a call every half hour, then “It’s ON” for 11:00. All the remaining quarterfinals ran. 1.6 to 1.8 m at 12 s, north wind at about 20 km/h.
• Wed 21: on hold at 13:00 and 14:00, off for the day at 15:30. 1.5 to 2.2 m at 8 to 9 s, north to north-north-east wind at 23 to 26 km/h with gusts near 40.
• Thu 22: on at 8:30 for the women’s semifinals, off for the day by 10:30. 2.4 m at 9 s; the wind was 4 km/h at 8:00 and had swung to 11 to 12 km/h from the north-west, onshore, by late morning. The WSL did not give a reason, so the wind is our reading.
• Fri 23: on hold at 9:00, 10:00, 12:00 and 13:30, then on for 14:00: men’s semifinals and both finals. The WSL page switched to “Event complete” between 18:00 and 18:15. 3.1 to 3.5 m at 10 to 11 s from the north-west, north wind at 25 to 27 km/h, on a falling tide through the afternoon.

Size did not decide much. The days off had a period of 8 s or less (18 and 19) or a strong wind (21). The days that ran had 9 to 12 s, with Saturday 17 the exception. Our 50 recorded contest days at Supertubos, from seven earlier editions since 2016 plus this one, show the same thing: days with heats averaged 2.4 m, 10 s and 17 km/h of wind, days without 2.3 m, 9 s and 26 km/h.

Where our contest page got it wrong

The page gives each day of a window a chance of being a contest day by comparing the forecast with past contest days. Here is how it did, misses first.

• It is too optimistic. Tested on past editions it had never seen, it calls 89% of contest days right but only 64% of the days the WSL held off, an average of 77%. The plain size, period and wind model we started the event with scored 81% on that test; with this year’s eight days added it fell to 69%. The model now also asks whether a clearly better day is still to come in the window, because the WSL can wait for it.
• On Monday 19 it still showed a 43% chance after the WSL had moved its next call to Tuesday. A next call set for a later day now counts as no heats.
• On Tuesday 20 it said “No heats” while the quarterfinals were running, because it read the WSL’s “It’s ON” line as a standby. Fixed the same day.
• After the event ended it went on rating the rest of the window: Saturday 24 showed “Could go either way” and Sunday 25 “Likely”. The model was answering whether the surf would suit a contest, not whether there was any contest left to run. A finished event now says so.
• We do not keep an archive of each day’s earlier percentage, so we cannot score the page day by day. The points above come from our own change log.

Next: Cloud 9, then Pipeline

The tour goes to Cloud 9 in Siargao, Philippines, from 31 October to 10 November, with the field cut to the top 24 men and 16 women, and finishes at the Pipe Masters from 8 to 20 December. Our Cloud 9 preview covers what that reef needs. If you are heading to Peniche now the contest has gone, Baleal is the sandy alternative on the north side of the peninsula when Supertubos is too big or too crowded.

Sources

• WSL: MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal 2026, event page and results
• WSL: Colapinto’s Portugal final record goes 3-0 (23 Oct 2026)
• WSL: Picklum’s Portugal win and the yellow jersey (23 Oct 2026)
• WSL: Finals Day post show, semifinal results (23 Oct 2026)
• WSL: The Catch Up, Day 4 (22 Oct 2026)
• WSL: The Catch Up, opening day (16 Oct 2026)
• A Bola: three Portuguese into the quarterfinals (16 Oct 2026)
• RTP: Teresa Bonvalot fifth at Supertubos
• RTP: Guilherme Ribeiro into the quarterfinals, Frederico Morais out
• RTP: semifinal line-ups and the 21 October call
• Surf Spoting: WSL status log and contest model (contests.json, contest-status.json), and hourly model hindcast for Supertubos (Open-Meteo marine and weather data; see the methodology)