How Nazaré Became the World's Biggest-Wave Arena

Fifteen years ago, nobody surfed Praia do Norte. Here's how a Portuguese fishing town became the biggest-wave arena on Earth — and how the records that followed actually get measured.

As recently as 2010, Praia do Norte wasn't a surf spot. It was a dangerous stretch of beach that local fishermen avoided on big days, sitting beneath a lighthouse that had nothing to do with surfing. Today it's the site of the biggest waves ever ridden. That transformation happened remarkably fast, and it's a story worth knowing before you stand on the same clifftop.

The local knowledge nobody outside Nazaré had heard

Long before any professional surfer arrived, Nazaré's fishermen understood Praia do Norte as uniquely violent — a place where the sea behaved differently to the calm town beach just around the headland. The connection to what lay offshore came from Dino Casimiro, a Portuguese lifeguard and former competitive bodyboarder, who had studied the seafloor and believed the underwater canyon offshore was funnelling swell energy directly into the bay. Casimiro spent years trying to interest surfers in the idea before Hawaiian big-wave pioneer Garrett McNamara took him up on it.

2010–2011: the discovery

McNamara arrived in 2010 with tow partner Andrew Cotton and began surfing Praia do Norte with local support, including Portuguese surfer Rodrigo Machado Silva. On 1 November 2011, McNamara rode a wave estimated at around 23.8 m (78 ft) — at the time, the largest wave ever surfed. The ride was captured on video, went viral, and did in months what decades of local knowledge hadn't: it put Nazaré on the global surfing map. Praia do Norte went from unknown to the destination for big-wave surfing almost overnight.

The record chase begins

McNamara's ride kicked off a decade of escalating attempts, official records, and near-misses. Rodrigo Koxa, a Brazilian surfer, broke McNamara's mark on 8 November 2017 with a wave measured at 24.38 m (80 ft) — a ride that stood up to the World Surf League's review process and became the first Nazaré wave to hold an official Guinness-recognised record under that scrutiny.

Maya Gabeira: from near-fatal wipeout to world record

No Nazaré story carries more weight than Maya Gabeira's. In October 2013, the Brazilian surfer suffered a horrific wipeout at Praia do Norte, nearly drowning and requiring resuscitation on the beach before a long recovery from a broken vertebra. Rather than retire, Gabeira returned to Nazaré, rebuilt her big-wave career, and on 11 February 2020 rode a 22.4 m (73.5 ft) wave that stands as the official women's world record — a comeback that's become one of the defining stories in the sport.

Sebastian Steudtner and the current record

German surfer Sebastian Steudtner, who had trained specifically for Nazaré's conditions for years, rode a wave on 29 October 2020 that Guinness World Records ratified at 26.21 m (86 ft) — the current official record for the largest wave ever surfed. In February 2024, Steudtner went bigger still: working with Porsche Engineering, his team used drone-based measurement technology to estimate a ride at 28.57 m (93.7 ft). That figure, if it holds up, would eclipse his own record by a wide margin — but as of this writing it remains provisional and unratified. Record claims of this scale take time to verify, and the wave has not yet cleared Guinness's official measurement process. Read more on the ride and the measurement technology used in CNN's coverage of the ride.

A quieter record: paddle-surfing

Not every record at Nazaré involves a tow-in jet ski. Paddle-surfing — catching a wave under your own power, without a tow — is widely considered the purer, harder discipline at this scale. The largest paddle-in wave ever ridden, at 19.2 m (63 ft), belongs to American surfer Aaron Gold — but it was set at Jaws (Pe'ahi) in Hawaii, not Nazaré. Despite everything Nazaré has produced on tow-in equipment, nobody has yet paddled into a wave here at record scale — a reminder that not every kind of "biggest" has happened in the same place.

From the WSL to Guinness: how validation changed

For most of the last decade, the World Surf League ran the review process behind the Big Wave Awards and effectively decided which Nazaré rides counted as records. Starting with the 2025/26 season, that role passed to Guinness World Records, which now independently reviews photogrammetry evidence and ratifies (or doesn't) each claim. It's a slower, more independent process than the old awards-show model, which is part of why Steudtner's 2024 wave is still sitting in limbo years after the ride.

The town underneath the story

It's worth remembering that all of this sits on top of an old fishing town that predates any of it by centuries. Nazaré's identity as a fishing community — visible today in the colourful boats on the town beach and the older women still occasionally seen in traditional dress near the market — hasn't been replaced by big-wave tourism so much as layered underneath it. The same headland that fishermen once treated with wary respect is now a viewing platform for people who travel from around the world to watch surfers do, deliberately, what those fishermen spent generations avoiding.

What's next

Every season brings a fresh chance at a ratified record, and the TUDOR Nazaré Big Wave Challenge holding period is usually when the biggest attempts happen. Check our live conditions page for the current rating, and our full records page for the complete verified log.

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