The first Formula Wing world championship

Racing needs fair equipment. For its Formula discipline the International Wing Sports Association (IWSA) only allows wings and foils that are series-produced as identical units, registered with World Sailing and on the IWSA production equipment list at least 30 days before an event. Under the class rules of January 2025, boards were still unregulated.

In September 2025 the first Formula Wing world championship was held at Cagliari, Sardinia, with 20,000 euros in prize money. Seventy-one men and twenty women took part, racing in knock-out rounds. A long-distance race was cancelled when the wind came too late.

Mathis Ghio won the men’s title ahead of Francesco Cappuzzo and Sean Herbert. Maddalena Spanu, 18, became the first women’s Formula Wing world champion, ahead of Vaina Picot and Aimilia Kosti.

In early 2026 US Sailing proposed to replace men’s and women’s kite foil racing with wing foil racing at the 2032 Olympic Games; World Sailing’s General Assembly was due to vote on its Olympic events later that year.