Spain’s Manel Arpa Zuriguel is the 2026 Surf Foil World Tour e-foil world champion after winning the season-ending French Riviera E-Foil World Cup in Menton and taking the title from defending champion Justin Chait of the United States.
The two riders arrived on the Côte d’Azur separated by 30 points. Neither had broken the other across a season that ran through Morocco, China, Germany and Italy. Menton, staged as the La Frech event from 11–13 September, was the last chance. Arpa won the Men Pro division. Chait finished second in the world ranking. Austria’s Clemens Kresser completed the championship podium.
Sweden’s Agnes Wicander closed out the women’s title after controlling the ranking for most of the year. Lola Arpa won the Women Pro race in Menton. Spain’s Julia Castro finished third in the women’s world ranking behind Wicander and Laura Jil Kurmann.
A title built across three continents
Arpa’s season was not a single good weekend. He won the opening African World Cup at Marchica Lagoon in Nador in May, the first e-foil World Cup held on the continent. He stood on the podium in Munich in June, when Justin Chait won the German stop at the Olympic rowing course. He won again at Lake Garda in July. Those results kept him inside 30 points of Chait heading into France.
The other marker on the résumé was Shenzhen. From 17–19 May, the Waydoo SFT E-Foil World Cup became the first World Tour stop on Chinese soil. Forty-seven riders raced on a course set against the Wuzhou Shanghaiwan shoreline with the Shenzhen skyline across the bay. The purse was a tour-record $30,000. Arpa won Men Pro ahead of Chait and Dutch veteran Piet Varkevisser. Wicander won the women’s race.
That Shenzhen result did two jobs. It put a Spanish name on the biggest cheque in the discipline, and it showed the tour could leave Europe without looking like an exhibition.
How the racing works
SFT e-foil events run time-trial qualifying, then a ladder of head-to-head heats. The board is electric. The race is not a drag strip. Riders who dump battery early, miss a gate or get caught in traffic do not recover the way a winged rider can wait for the next gust. Energy management is part of the result.
That is why a 30-point gap to the last event is a real championship, not a formality. Chait, the 2025 world champion, still had a route. He needed Arpa to stumble in Menton. Arpa did not.
What comes next
SFT’s next confirmed gathering is the Surf Foil World Cup in Dakhla, Morocco, from 6–11 October, listed for surf foil and foil-assist racing rather than the e-foil title fight just closed. For the wider foil audience the Menton result is the proof point that e-foil racing now has a season, a ranking and a champion who had to win on more than one coastline.