This article was first published as a preview. All three events have now taken place, and it has been updated to cover what happened at each.
For about two weeks at the end of this summer, the Virginia Beach Oceanfront hosted three very different surf events. One week it was the 64th edition of an ocean contest first held in 1963. The next it was several hundred surf park executives debating the future of the industry over hotel coffee. Then came a brand-new women's festival on the beach. Atlantic Park Surf, the Wavegarden Cove that opened here in 2025, sat in the middle of the run and hosted a piece of it directly.
August 23 to 30: the Coastal Edge East Coast Surfing Championships
The oldest event on the calendar is also the one with nothing to do with wave pools. The 64th Annual Coastal Edge East Coast Surfing Championships ran along the Virginia Beach Oceanfront from the 1st Street Jetty to 10th Street, with the heats surfed in the ocean at the jetty. WTKR reported it underway, drawing thousands of visitors and vendors. What started decades ago as a single-day, 12-hour event has grown into a week-long festival, with art, music, action sports, and even cornhole layered around the heats. It is the kind of event that reminds you Virginia Beach was a surf town long before anyone poured a lagoon here.
September 1 to 3: the Surf Park Summit
Two days after the contest ended, the crowd flipped from surfers to suits. The Surf Park Summit returned to Virginia Beach for a second consecutive year, opening with a site day at Atlantic Park before shifting to the Marriott Virginia Beach Oceanfront for two more days of panels and pitch sessions. Surf Park Central, which runs the Summit, said it brought around 400 senior leaders together, calling it the largest gathering in the surf park industry's history. The Summit's website lists more than 75 speakers for 2026, and the program listed 15 panels covering everything from capital strategy and surf-anchored real estate to design, engineering, and water filtration.
The first full day of panels closed with Surf Park Sharks, the Summit's pitch competition, with prizes worth $15,000 that included a Surf Park Summit 2027 sponsorship package. Hidden Lake Surf Resort in Buckeye, Arizona won it with a 120-acre plan built around an existing lake and a 12.5-acre Endless Surf lagoon, presented by a team led by sponsor and managing partner Drew Boyles. At the Surf Park Awards that followed, Developer of the Year went to "Hidden Lakes (Drew Boyles)", as Surf Park Central listed it, with Leadership going to Shaun Hutchinson, Sustainability to DSRT Surf, Community Impact to Lost Shore Surf Resort, and Best Surf Park Event to URBNSURF Sydney with STAB.
September 5 to 7: the Super Girl Surf Festival
Labor Day weekend closed out the run with something Virginia Beach had never hosted before: the Super Girl Surf Festival, in its first Virginia Beach edition after the city was chosen as the festival's third location. Super Girl already had an East Coast stop in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, where its 6th annual festival is set for 7 and 8 November 2026. The free festival's lineup paired a WSL women's surf competition at the 1st Street Jetty with 22 free concerts at 3rd Street, featuring Switchfoot, CeeLo Green, Lupe Fiasco, Gym Class Heroes, and more than a dozen other acts, plus a festival village, fitness and wellness classes, and a mentorship program with pro surfers. Eden Walla and Sally Cohen won the shortboard and longboard titles, becoming Virginia Beach's first Super Girl champions. It was squarely a beach event, but it capped a stretch that started with an ocean contest and passed through a room full of pool developers along the way.
Why it all lands in the same city
Atlantic Park pitched the run as one series. In a July press release, it said it would help kick off "a landmark series of surfing events" that would "cement Virginia Beach as the capital of East Coast surfing". Atlantic Park gave Virginia Beach the first Wavegarden Cove in the United States, which makes it a logical host for a conference built around exactly that kind of development, and the Summit has now opened at the park two years running. The park draws its own crowds too: WAVY reported that more than 90,000 people passed through its gates in its first full year of operation, and Brittney Albert, Atlantic Park's development and operations manager, said they came from all 50 states and 43 countries.
The city was already sitting on one of the country's longest-running surf contests and a beachfront long enough for Super Girl to stretch from the 1st Street Jetty to the Virginia Beach pier. Super Girl founder Rick Bratman called Virginia Beach a "natural choice", pointing to its "strong surf and action sports culture". Stack all three together and you get a surf capital moment: real waves, artificial ones, and the people financing the next round of surf parks, inside about two weeks.
Some of it will look different next year. As of 11 October 2026, the Surf Park Summit's website lists the 2027 edition for 5 to 7 October in Palm Springs, California. WTKR reported before the festival that Super Girl's organizers hope to make it a recurring event at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.
Photo courtesy of Atlantic Park Surf.
