The WSL has just announced that the 2019 World Longboard Tour will be made up of four stages, one in Galicia, Spain, another in Noosa, Australia, another in Long Island, New York and the final in Taiwan and that the ranking generated in them will determine the new world champion.

Until last year there was only one event that you qualified for through a series of QS tournaments.

The first three stages will award 6000 points and the final, in Taiwan, 10.000. The dates of the event are as follows:

Longboard Tour Noosa: March  7-10, 2019
Longboard Tour Galicia: August 27 - 31, 2019
Longboard Tour New York: September  6-12, 2019
Taiwan Open World Longboard Championships: TBA

Spain returns to the top division of world surfing with this tournament, after the CTs in Mundaka were discontinued. It is not clear, however, how the filter will be applied to determine which athletes compete in the first and second divisions.

On the other hand, it was announced that Devon Howard was hired as the director of this tour. Until now he was the head of Surf Relik, the new world longboard tour that had gained many followers because it promoted classic and modern in separate divisions.

“We are thrilled to welcome Devon Howard as our longboard tour director, knowing that he will be working in the office helping to grow our longboarding stakeholder platform,” said CEO Sophie Goldschmidt. “The Longboard Tour is an exciting expansion of our longboard events… We would like to thank Tourism and Events Queensland, Discover Long Island, and the New York City Department of Tourism and I LOVE NY for their support in making this possible.”

Howard said: “This is a key step for the WSL to grow its professional platform, which has decades of history of crowning champions. Adding events in Noosa, Galicia and New York will make the title race exciting.”