In just two years, Natural Selection Surf has done something that has been lacking for most of the past decade and that’s to make competitive surfing feel, dare I say, great again.
The format plays a part, no priority, no single venue, no grinding through small surf to bank points. Sessions judged on Creativity, Risk, Execution, Difficulty, and Overall Impression, with Mother Nature dictating the conditions and surfers adapting or going home. But if the format is the vessel, then the lineup is the engine. And the 2026 lineup for the South Africa edition, premiering September 25 on Red Bull TV and YouTube, is one of the most compelling fields ever assembled for a competitive surf event.
Twelve surfers and ten days of charging, free from any constraints other than the conditions themselves. A stretch of South African coastline that can deliver a 200-meter point break around one bend and a shallow-reef slab around the next. Reigning champions Milla Coco Brown and Soli Bailey return to defend their titles against a field that includes five 2025 finalists and seven surfers who have never competed at NST — all of them selected because they’ve spent their careers doing the one thing Natural Selection rewards most — fully sending it on waves that most people only watch from the channel.
2026 Natural Selection Surf Roster
Women
- Milla Brown — Bungan Beach, Sydney, NSW, Australia (Returning Champion)
- Kirra Pinkerton — San Clemente, California, USA (2025 Finalist)
- Eden Walla — San Clemente, California, USA
- Sanoa Dempfle-Olin — Tofino, British Columbia, Canada
On the women’s side, Brown and Kirra Pinkerton are joined by 17-year-old Eden Walla, a San Clemente charger already building a reputation in serious surf, and Canada’s Sanoa Dempfle-Olin, shaped by years chasing powerful waves along the rugged coastline of Tofino. “Last year watching the girls compete was super cool,” said Walla. “I felt like they were pushing the limits of women’s surfing. Hopefully this year we can raise that bar even higher.”
Men
- Mikey Wright — Culburra Beach, NSW, Australia
- Soli Bailey — Byron Bay, NSW, Australia (Returning Champion)
- Eithan Osborne — Ventura, California, USA (2025 Finalist)
- Noah Beschen — North Shore, Hawaiʻi, USA (2025 Finalist)
- Eli Beukes — Kommetjie, Cape Town, South Africa
- Balaram Stack — Long Beach, New York, USA
- Hughie Vaughan — Bateau Bay, NSW, Australia
- Jarvis Earle — Cronulla, NSW, Australia
The men’s field is a masterclass in surfing’s counterculture, the ones who opted out of the traditional path and went looking for better waves instead. Noah Beschen and Eithan Osborne return alongside Bailey, and they’ll face South African local Eli Beukes, whose technical knowledge of heavy, consequence-laden waves makes him a genuine threat on home soil, East Coast legend Balaram Stack, Australia’s Jarvis Earle and Hughie Vaughan, and perhaps the most unpredictable surfer in the field, Mikey Wright.
“NST has looked like a dream competition to be part of,” said Stack. “Incorporating aspects of freesurfing with competitiveness will make for a mental event — where we can focus on the waves and the land and hopefully have less stress about competing in small surf.”
Natural Selection isn’t asking these surfers to perform for judges in mediocre conditions. It’s dropping them into one of the world’s most dynamic coastlines and watches to see who dominates.
The result is unlike anything else in surfing’s history and is already the most interesting event in performance surfing. September 25 is when it all goes down.
Related: Natural Selection Surf Reveals New, “Off-The-Grid” Location For 2026
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