Welcome to our first BLU newsletter. We have lots to share and we felt like this was a good way to start. If you want to be added to our mailing list to receive these first via email – just drop us a line to britishlongboardunion@yahoo.com and ask to be added.
This first ones a long’un so buckle in!
A look back at 2025
We ran 3 brilliantly supported events last year, with Porthmeor, Saunton and the Single Fin at Saunton. Each comp delivered very different wave conditions and inspiring longboarding across the divisions. Out of the water it was just brilliant, as always, to see the longboarding community together.
Everyone running surf events last year was talking about the same thing, in that no one can remember a year like it, with constant cancellations for weather and waves. We’re hoping for more consistent conditions in 2026.
Behind the scenes there has been a lot going on to get us to a position where we can make the BLU into a club, supported with the right processes and policies, and hopefully attracting more sponsorship to enable us to deliver more events.
Thanks to our 2025 sponsors, as you read the list below it brings home just how much support is needed to deliver these events. Many of our last year sponsors are supporting us again this year and we would not be able to run without sponsorship support.
Tregenna Castle, St Ives Bid, Mango Surf, The Thatch, Saunton Beach Cafe, Taylored Holidays, Precision Engineering & Physique Gym all provided finanical support which is essential to cover event costs. Guard and XTRATUF provided headline prizes for our whole Classic Tour and Mango Surf sponsored the prizes for the Single Fin. In addition, we were supported by Kosin, Ocean Frog & Saltburn Surf Shop.
Plans for 2026
Our 2026 tour got off to a cracking start at Tynemouth, and we’re all excited for the Porthmeor Classic this weekend. We are hoping to run 2 further events this year, but our biggest challenge is sourcing the financial funding for these – if anyone has any suggestions or ideas on this please get in touch.
Reviewing our divisions for last year we did not have many entries for the Over 35 Women’s so we have taken the decision for 2026 to change this division to an Over 40 Women’s Masters. This means that we can combine the Master’s entries to be a mixed gender entry if needed. This is in line with the approach taken on Cadets and Grand Masters which are also mixed gender entry. If numbers of entrants changes over 2026 we will revisit this for 2027.
BLU Club membership
For insurance purposes all competitors need to be a member of both Surfing England and the BLU. You should have had an email explaining this. BLU membership comes free of charge alongside your Surfing England membership. This change was needed to ensure that we are complying with the conditions of the insurance that we operate under for all our events. If you are a member of another Surfing Federation as well please just let us know the country that you would like your results accredited to when you enter.
By establishing ourselves as a club we are hoping to be able to secure some funding through grants. Also with 2026 being the 30th Year of the BLU it seems the ideal time to make this step change. The BLU works because of all you who enter our events, share the stoke for longboarding and inspire and encourage each other. In the autumn we hope to hold our first BLU AGM so that we can keep improving our tour and make 2027 and beyond even better.
If you have any ideas or suggestions please don’t wait till the AGM please just drop us an email: Britishlongboardunion@yahoo.com
Who runs the BLU
The BLU is run by a team of dedicated volunteers and we need more people to join us to spread the considerable workload that is needed to make our tours happen. We urgently need the following roles fulfilled:
Secretary/ Ops Admin – Dawn will be standing down shortly so we are looking for someone with great admin and organisational skills to take over from her. Fully supported training and hand over will be available
Treasurer – This is a new role and it shouldn’t be too time consuming. It will involve monthly account monitoring and preparing annual accounts for auditing
Sponsorship and grant applications – this can be a team role or an activity that some people can take on for us and not need to be part of the formal team if that would better for them.
All of our volunteers fit their BLU work between events into their busy lives so please bear with us if we don’t reply to emails and messages super quickly or can’t do announcements till work has finished. We are trying to use WhatsApp broadcast groups as well as social media to inform you all of key information relating to our events.
In our next newsletter we were planning to introduce you to our 2026 sponsors and the BLU team. Please let us know what else you would like to know more about.
Thank you
Minnow, Norm, Graham, Richard, Charlie, Faye and Dawn
