Wheels and Waves: where it all touches

There's one place, one week a year, where surf, motorcycles, skate and the poster stop being separate worlds.

From 10 to 14 June 2026, Wheels and Waves held its fifteenth edition in Biarritz and the Basque Country. Custom motorcycles, surf, skate, BMX, art and music in one place, each discipline feeding the others. The festival village, at the Cité de l'Océan, is its headquarters.

It's not a trade show. It's a geography: Punk's Peak on Mount Jaizkibel on the Spanish side, the Race of the Lords, the vintage rally in Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle. Corroded metal, cold water, asphalt, exactly the material we look for.

Why this place speaks to us

RIOT BREAK didn't invent the crossing of surf, skate and underground. Wheels and Waves has had it in place for fifteen years, on the coast, without shouting about it. Custom culture, screen printing, records, boards, jackets: the same rock restraint, the same refusal of flash. Strength doesn't shout, it parks at the edge of the ocean.

This is where our worlds meet. The well-made object, oil and salt, the poster set on a garage wall. You don't go there to consume an event. You go there to recognise your own.

What we take from it

One thing above all: strong cultures don't blend, they touch. Surf keeps surf, motorcycles keep motorcycles. But for a few days, in one place, they share a common taste for the raw, the held, the right. That's the ridgeline RIOT BREAK follows the rest of the year.