Everything You Need to Know About the Freeride World Tour 2025

The 2025 Freeride World Tour is about to begin and skiers, snowboarders and fans alike are heating up with excitement. This year's competition will bring familiar faces, familiar landscape and a whole lot of excitement. Along with all that traditional stuff, there are aspects of the Tour that have been revisited and given a little switchup. The freeride season will feature a new Cut format, an all-new destination on the map and a fresh restructuring of the FWT Challenger Series, keeping fans and participants on their toes.

Here is everything you need to know about the 2025 FWT:

Event Destinations

Event Categories

The competition is split into four categories:

Ski Men promises to take center stage with the new tricks up the sleeves of the athletes. This year it will be a battle between former FWT champions such as Max Hitzig (2024), Valentin Rainer (2023), Maxime Chabloz (2022), and Kristofer Turdell (2018, 2021)

Ski Women will highlight several returning competitors/champions, the likes of which include Justine Dufor-Lapointe (2023 FWT champion) and Arianna Tricomi (2018, 2019, 2020). Hedvig Wessel will unfortunately be sitting this season out after taking the trophy home last season; however, fresh talent from Astrid Cheylus, who was runner up in 2024, will give the competition plenty of electrifying twists as the athletes carve up the mountain.

Snowboard Men will be an intense undertaking as experienced riders Jonathan Penfield and Camille Armand elbow their way into the spotlight after Victor de Le Rue conquered all last season. de Le Rue aims to break the record of three title this season, a standard set previously by his brother, Xavier.

Snowboard Women is turning out to be a showdown between the Canadians for the 2025 season, as two-time FWT Champions Erin Suave and Katie Anderson come in with cutting edges. With such tight competition, the Snowboard Women category will bring the best tricks in the book for the ultimate champion to come out on top.

"The Cut"

In previous years, the FIS Freeride World Tour by Peak Performance required athletes to compete at four events to qualify based on their best three results. This season, however, riders can now look forward to five total events for the chance to secure their top three results. The expansion of the qualifying events give competitors an extra opportunity to show what they are capable of as well as a decrease in pressure to be perfect at every single stop in order to make it to the main event.

With the "main event" being the YETI Xtreme Verbier by Honda in Switzerland, the stakes are still quite high, but the addition of a cutting event, roughly 60% of riders will now qualify at the Baqueira Beret Pro instead of the 50% from the previous season. The 10% shift was proven when feedback revealed that the Cuts in previous years were a bit too harsh and hasty in eliminating riders that had yet to show their true colors.

New Destination

After an eight-year break, the FWT is returning to France this year with a new stop in Val Thorens. From January 27 to February 1, 2025, athletes will get the chance to fly through the snow on the iconic Cime Caron, a legendary freeriding hub that boasts challenging terrain and breathtaking views.