The World Skateboarding Tour concludes 2025 calendar with spectacular finale in Japan!

Kitakyushu, Japan, Nov 30 – 184 skateboarders from 45 nations descended upon Japan’s southernmost island of Kyushu for this season closer for the World Skateboarding Tour.

The World Skateboarding Tour is the globe’s largest skateboarding event series.

Each year, the WST traverses the planet pitting the best skateboarders in the world against one another to gain vital points for the World Skateboarding Ranking, which determines eligibility to go forward and compete in LA28.

Previous Tour stops have included Switzerland, Dubai, Argentina, Italy, China and Hungary.

This brand- new destination for skateboarding forms a bridgehead for future expansion of youth cultural events and destination marketing in southern Japan which is determined to become both an international and domestic draw for youth culture and action sports.

A press conference attended by superstars Nyjah Huston, Yuto Horigome, Coco Yoshizawa, Chloe Covell and Cordano Russell- as well as World Skate president Sabatino Aracu and the mayor of Kitakyushu- marked a starting point for what are huge plans to make this region of Japan a permanent seat of international competitive skateboarding from now on.

Such is the standard of skateboarding on the World Skateboarding Tour that neither of Japan’s Olympic gold medallists Coco Yoshizawa and Yuto Horigome were even able to make it into Sunday’s finals. While Japan were as expected the dominant nation in terms of finalists within both Men’s and Women’s divisions with a total of seven entrants overall, the nationality mix was more eclectic than elsewhere with two two Chinese skateboarders, two Koreans, two Brazilians, one Australian, one Argentinian and one Peruvian.

Among that number were Tour newcomer Wallace Gabriel from Brazil who was one of the jaw-dropping success stories of the week, and appearing in his first final Deivid Tuesta from Lima, who was identified as a prospect through World Skate’s Youth Athlete Development programme in 2023, a scheme financially supported by Olympic Solidarity and one which is clearly paying dividends. In the Women’s division, mightily-impressive Tour debutante Jiyul Shin from Korea blew minds when she joined first-time finalists Yuanling Zhu (China) and Nanami Onishi (Japan) in shaking up the established order within their field.

Remarkably, there was no American representation in the final sixteen at this time of asking, despite the USA being the birthplace of the activity. With a shared prize purse of $200,000 divided evenly between the sexes there was intense competition for podium places for those vital World Skateboard Ranking points going into the 2026 season which will form an arrowhead toward the Los Angeles Olympic Games which are now just two summers away.

Japan dominating proceedings on their home turf by delivering a clean sweep of the Men’s podium led by the apparently unbeatable maestro Sora Shirai ahead of countrymen Kairi Netsuke and Yukito Aoki- and also took top two places in Women’s led by first-time winner Ibuki Matsumoto who blew minds and 2023 World Champion Yumeka Oda in second.

Australia’s Chloe Covell rallied from a disappointing run section to claim third place- but the fact that she won in Rome last June shows just how quickly the standard is progressing in women’s skateboarding today!