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The 2026 Paddle Europe Stand Up Paddling Championships officially begin on Friday in Agios Nikolaos, with Sprint providing the first European medals of the week.

Before racing gets underway, athletes, officials and guests will come together this afternoon for the Opening Ceremony at Kimzu Beach Park at 17:30, setting the stage for three consecutive days of European Championship competition.

On Friday, attention turns fully to the water, where 140 athletes are listed across the official European Championship Sprint categories, from Junior through Open, Masters 40+ and Masters 50+.

The Sprint programme will be contested over 100 metres at KIMZU – EOT Beach, with heats, semifinals and finals all taking place on the same day.

From 200 metres in Szeged to 100 metres in Agios Nikolaos

Friday's races will crown only the second set of Paddle Europe SUP Sprint champions.

At the inaugural championships in Szeged in 2024, the Sprint titles were decided over 200 metres and only in the Open categories.

Two years later, the programme has expanded considerably, with European titles now available for Junior, Open, Masters 40+ and Masters 50+, for both men and women.

The shorter 100-metre format also creates a different challenge, with little margin for error from the start to the finish.

Several athletes who stood on the podium in Szeged are back, meaning the first European Sprint champions will play a major role in the battle for the second generation of continental titles.

Novitskaia returns to defend the women's crown

The Open Women's Sprint brings together 15 athletes and has one of the most accomplished fields of the opening day.

At its centre is Natalia Novitskaia, the defending European champion. Representing AIN, Novitskaia won the inaugural title in Szeged ahead of Greece's Kyriaki Logotheti and Poland's Marta Apanasewicz.

All three return to competition in Agios Nikolaos.

The opening heat immediately brings several major names together. Novitskaia will line up against home favourite Logotheti, Hanna Kaminska of Poland and Hungary's Csillag Kocsis.

Kaminska arrives with a recent World Championship medal after taking bronze in the Junior Women's Sprint at the 2025 World Championships in Abu Dhabi.

Kocsis was fourth in that same World Championship final and has already enjoyed European success, having won the Junior Women's Long Distance title in Szeged in 2024.

The second heat includes Apanasewicz and another major young name, Claudia Postiglione of Italy.

Postiglione finished fifth in the Open European Sprint final as a junior athlete in 2024, before becoming Junior Women's Sprint World Champion in Abu Dhabi in 2025.

With the top two athletes from each Open Women's heat advancing directly to the Final A, the opening rounds could have a major impact on the medal race.

Those finishing from third to sixth will have another opportunity through the semifinal, from which the first four will complete the eight-athlete Final A.

Korobov leads a strong men's field

The Open Men's Sprint features 20 athletes divided across three heats.

The 2024 European champion Andrii Kraitor is not on the Agios Nikolaos start list, meaning a new champion will be crowned on Friday.

Two athletes from the inaugural podium are back.

Lithuania's Vadim Korobov, European silver medallist in Szeged, arrives in Crete with an even more recent international result behind him: he took silver in the Open Men's Sprint at the 2025 World Championships.

Spain's Manuel Hoyuela, the 2024 European bronze medallist, also returns. Hoyuela was one of the outstanding athletes of the inaugural European Championships, where he additionally won the Open Men's Long Distance title and took Technical bronze.

Korobov will race in Heat 2 alongside another athlete making the transition into the Open category, Romania's Matei Barbu, who was silver medallist in the Junior Men's Sprint at the 2025 World Championships.

Hoyuela starts in Heat 3, while Heat 1 features two more athletes who reached the first European Sprint final in Szeged: Greece's Phaedon Doukas and Denmark's Christian Andersen. Doukas was fourth in the 2024 Sprint, while Andersen finished fifth and later became the inaugural European Technical champion.

The men's qualification system leaves no direct route from the heats to the final. The first five athletes from each of the three heats advance to the semifinals, with the remainder eliminated.

Two semifinals follow at 12:50 and 12:55, with the top four from each semifinal qualifying for Final A. The remaining semifinalists will contest Final B.

World medallists also feature in the Junior fields

The Junior categories bring some of the strongest emerging European SUP athletes to Agios Nikolaos.

A field of 36 Junior Men will be divided into five heats, while 26 Junior Women will race across four heats.

Among the Junior Women is Italy's Sveva Sabato, who became Junior Women's Technical World Champion in 2025 and also collected silver in Long Distance. She had already won European Junior Long Distance bronze in Szeged a year earlier.

Greece's Erasmia Malekaki, silver medallist in the Junior Women's Technical race at the 2025 World Championships, is also part of Friday's Sprint field.

In the Junior Men's competition, Germany's Benyam Bossack, Portugal's Lourenço Viveiros and the Netherlands' Maximus Sijrier all arrive with 2025 World Championship medals from other SUP disciplines.

Viveiros was Junior Technical silver medallist in Abu Dhabi, Bossack took Technical bronze, while Sijrier claimed Junior Long Distance bronze.

The qualification route will put pressure on the Junior Men from the first race. The top three athletes in each of the five heats, plus the fastest fourth-placed athlete across all heats, advance to the semifinals.

From there, the first four in each semifinal progress to Final A, with positions five to eight moving into Final B.

For the Junior Women, the top four from each of the four heats advance to two semifinals, with the first four from each semifinal reaching Final A and the remaining athletes racing Final B.

Masters champions and World medallists

The Masters categories add another layer of international experience to the first day.

In Masters 50+ Women, Greece's Penny Tsaoutou will be one of the names to follow closely on home water.

Tsaoutou was the 2025 Masters 50+ Sprint World Championship silver medallist and also became World Champion in Long Distance in Abu Dhabi.

The Masters 40+ Women's field includes Italy's Vira Lemekha, winner of the inaugural European Masters Long Distance title in 2024, alongside athletes including Claudia Luchetta and Olga Merkulova.

Unlike the other categories, the five-athlete Masters 40+ Women's field will go directly to the Final A at 17:30, without preliminary rounds.

The Masters 40+ Men, Masters 50+ Men and Masters 50+ Women will use a similar progression system to the Open Women: the first two athletes from each heat qualify directly for Final A, while positions three to six advance to a semifinal. The first four in that semifinal then complete the final field.

Racing starts at 09:00

The first racing of the championships will come from the recreational U14 programme.

Six U14 Men's heats open the day from 09:00, followed by three U14 Women's heats from 09:30.

The official European Championship programme starts at 11:00 with the Open Men's heats.

Open Women follow at 11:15, with the Masters categories beginning at 11:25. Junior racing starts at 11:55 and continues until 12:35.

European Championship semifinals begin at 12:50, before the programme pauses ahead of the decisive afternoon session.

European champions to be crowned from 16:30

The afternoon session begins with the U14 finals at 16:00 and 16:10 before attention turns entirely to the European title races.

The Junior Men's Final A is scheduled for 16:30, followed by Junior Women at 16:50.

Masters 50+ Men race for gold at 17:00 and Masters 50+ Women at 17:10, before the Masters 40+ Men's final at 17:20 and the Masters 40+ Women's final at 17:30.

The two headline Open finals will close the racing programme.

The Open Men's European title will be decided at 17:40, followed by the Open Women's Final A at 17:50.

Medal ceremonies are scheduled to begin at 19:00.

After the first champions are crowned, the Paddle Europe Championships continue on Saturday with the Technical competition before Long Distance concludes the continental programme on Sunday.

But first comes Sprint — one hundred metres, one day, and the first European titles of Agios Nikolaos 2026 on the line.

Online results here