The 2026 FIS Freeride World Tour (FWT) roster and calendar was released last month. Nineteen men and 11 women made the qualified ski rosters while 11 men and seven women will compete on the snowboard side. Four Colorado athletes with local ties are set to join the brand’s highest level.

Agostina Vietti, Joey Leonardo and Kelly Hilleke are rookies on the women’s and men’s ski circuits, respectively and Shayne Blue Sandblom is a rookie in men’s snowboarding.

Vietti is a Ski and Snowboard Club Vail coach who competes for Argentina. Last April, the 27-year-old became the first Argentinian women to qualify for the FWT tour with a silver at the Challenger A-Basin event.

The FWT Challenger series is the penultimate step to the FWT, which is the highest level of freeride skiing and snowboarding on the planet. Nine Region 1 (Europe, Oceania and Asia) and nine Region 2 (North and South America) athletes are awarded slots on the FWT based upon their season rankings on the FWT Challenger circuit, which included four scheduled stops last winter.

Hilleke, Roaring Fork Valley skier, and Leonardo, who hails from Edwards, finished first and second in the overall Challenger series standings last year to punch their tickets to this winter’s FWT.

Sandblom joins the snowboard crew after winning the Challenger Series America in his debut season on the Freeride World Qualifier circuit. The 22-year-old Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard alumnus won two out of the four Challenger stops.

The six-stop 2026 FWT kicks off in Baqueira Beret, Spain on Jan. 16-21. After the first four regular season events, the top 60% of riders — ranked by their top-3 results — advance to the FWT Finals, taking place in Haines, Alaska and Verbier, Switzerland. Fans can follow the FWT live at FreerideWorldTour.com, where every event is broadcast.

The Freeride World Tour was founded in 1996 as the Verbier Extreme and included only snowboard competitions until 2004. In December 2022, the FWT merged with FIS, the governing body for international winter sports. The first edition of the FIS Freeride World Championships will run from Feb. 1-6, 2026 on the Pyrenees’ challenging terrain of Ordino Arcalis. Hilleke will join Edwards native Blake Moller and 64 other athletes for the inaugural event.

Original reporting from the Vail Daily