Go Skateboarding Day 2026
Cape Town Let Us Skate It
Thibault’s Big 4. Company’s Garden. Cash for tricks. One Golden Ticket.
A proper street mission through the middle of Cape Town.
Some Go Skateboarding Days are a park session, a group photo and a few clips for the feed.
This was not that.
On 21 June 2026, Cape Town did something skateboarders have been dreaming about for years: it opened the spots. Not a skatepark. Not a fenced-off demo. The actual city. The stairs, bricks and historic ground that generations of skaters have looked at, rolled past, been chased from, or quietly added to the mental “one day” list. For one day, nobody was looking over their shoulder.
No security sprint.
No “last try” before the session got smoked.
Just boards on brick, music bouncing off office blocks, filmers running backwards, kids pushing through the crowd to get a better angle, and the city slowly realising it had been turned into a living street mission.
Organised by Clued Skateboarding with the support of Mission for Inner City Cape Town, Grand Skate Tour and the partners who kept the cash and product moving, this Go Skateboarding Day was not built around speeches. It was built around spots. And the first one was waiting at Thibault Square.
The 4 Block Woke Up
There was one obstacle at Thibault.
The Big 4.
Cape Town skaters know that set. Even if you have never rolled up to it, you know it. You know the shape of the run-up. You know the people who have taken turns there. You know the feeling of standing at the bottom and watching somebody convince themselves that gravity is negotiable.
This time it was official.
That alone changed the air.
Brad Balie did not just open the session with a nollie inward heel. He opened a piece of Thibault Square history.
That trick had a ghost on it. Back in the day, the nollie inward heel at the Big 4 belonged to Shuaib Philander, the kind of spot-specific legend that gets passed down in conversations more than captions. So when Brad rolled up, took a couple pushes and stomped it on his second go, it was not just a bounty getting handled.
It was a callback. A Cape Town trick, on a Cape Town spot, brought back in front of the whole city.
That was all it took.
The square switched on.
Office workers started drifting out. Tourists slowed down. People who clearly had no idea what trick they had just seen still knew enough to pull out their phones. Every roll-away dragged more bodies toward the stairs.
Siye was impossible to miss in the pink hat, cutting through the Thibault crowd like a highlighter mark every time he rolled back up. When Siyethembha “Siye” Matshalilanga put down the switch hardflip, the Joburg presence stopped being a side note. It became part of the session’s engine. Dale from the Milltree crew was right there in the mix too, grey shorts, light green tee, green board, throwing bangers into the Big 4 session and giving Thibault that proper crew-session feel. It was not one skater taking over. It was a spot getting passed around, pushed and raised every few minutes.
Saeed Waggie was already moving like he knew he had a long day ahead of him. He handled a clean tre flip at Thibault and never really disappeared after that. Every time the crowd shifted, there he was again, board in hand, eyes on the next thing.
Alex Williams introduced the energy he had all day: a man possessed to skate. He looked like he was trying to skate anything and everything put in front of him. Nollie flip. Nollie front heel. Back up the stairs. Back into the crowd. Back to the top. It was not a highlight hunt. It was a man clocking every spot on the route before the window closed.
Moses Adams brought the kind of style you cannot fake, putting down a nollie bigspin and a nollie backside flip that reminded everyone why his name carries weight. The tricks were heavy, but the way he rode away was the point. Calm. Loose. Like the square had always been his.
Boipelo Awah made sure her name belonged in the Thibault story too. As the only woman to stack footage on the day, she made the moment count. In a session full of noise, cash and bodies flying down stairs, her skating spoke volumes. It should go without saying, but it matters: South African women’s skateboarding needs more of what Boipelo brought to the run-up. More women in the mix. More women getting paid when they roll away. Boipelo is leading from the front, making her presence felt, and hopefully more of the ladies in the scene take a page out of her book.
By then the Big 4 had gone from an obstacle to a magnet. People were hugging at the top, waving cash around, filming from the sides, yelling over the mic, and crowding the landing without even noticing they were part of the shot.
That is when the day found its real tone.
Not polished.
Not controlled.
Skateboarding.
The Push to the Garden
After Thibault, the event did not pack up and reset. It moved.
Boards hit the pavement and the whole thing rolled toward Company’s Garden.
Skaters, filmers, kids, parents, friends, strangers, people who had just been trying to get through town and somehow got pulled into the parade.
That push mattered.
It turned the day from a contest into a street mission.
You could hear it before you saw it: wheels rattling across brick, music following the group, people shouting from block to block, the kind of noise that makes pedestrians stop and ask, “What is this?”
The answer was simple.
Go Skateboarding Day.
Not as a slogan. As a moving thing. As a line of skateboarders dragging the city’s attention from one spot to the next.
By the time everyone reached Company’s Garden, the session already had a body count of makes, near-misses, new fans and half the city’s camera rolls.
The Garden Got Loud
Company’s Garden did not ease into anything.
By the time the session reached the famous Big 5, Josh and Claudio were not just MCs holding microphones anymore. They were part of the spot, hallmarks of the day, the voices pulling the crowd back into every battle and making sure the skaters felt the weight of the moment.
Every make had a soundtrack. Every slam got dragged back into the session. Every kid standing at the top of the blocks got made to feel like the whole Garden was waiting for them to send it.
Looking across the Big 5, Josh laughed and called it how everyone already felt.
“It must be cash for tricks!”
That one line basically became the rulebook.
No complicated format. No waiting for permission. Skate, land, get paid.
The younger skaters from Ziyaad’s Skate School were the first to light up the blocks.
That part should never be treated like a cute side note. Those kids came in swinging. Ollies, flips, full sends off the stone, no hesitation, no need to ask if they were allowed. Half of them looked like they had been waiting their whole lives to skate a spot with a real crowd around it.
And the crowd gave it back.
Every make got louder.
Every slam got a louder “you’ve got it.”
That was one of the best things about the day:
People were not only cheering the hammers. They were cheering the battles. The tries. The commitment. The kid standing at the top trying to convince his feet to do the thing one more time.
Moses came back out after taking a knock earlier in the day and dropped a huge kickflip off the Big 5 like he was coming from the top rope. It was one of those tricks where the landing hits before your brain catches up. The crowd knew what it had just seen and let him hear it. Then Moses stepped back and spent the rest of the day hyping the next crew, holding the line, and making sure the session kept breathing.
The OG. Every skater’s favourite skater. Showing us that the flame will never burn out.
Alex Williams never missed a beat. Not once.
Claudio had been calling him “Cape Town’s Jesus” all afternoon, which became less and less ridiculous to say as he landed trick after trick. Voices were broken. The crowd was out of breath. Then Alex would roll up again and somehow the whole place reignited.
Then Alex sent the switch frontside flip that shut the spot down.
Bolts.
Noise everywhere.
An eruption that would have made any passer-by stop dead in their tracks.
Claudio threw his hands up.
“Praise the Lord!”
The nickname did not feel like an exaggeration.
Spot Surgery
The double could have been a mess.
The younger skaters wanted it. The crowd wanted it. The filmers wanted it. The problem was the run-up. To get the right speed, skaters were basically being sent through a wall of spectators. The speed was there, but the line was not.
So the session paused.
Not because anybody was tired.
Because the spot needed surgery.
This might be the most skateboarding part of the whole day. Saeed, Liam and the filmers started piecing together a roll-in while everyone else became an instant construction crew. Boards moved. Tape came out. No argument, just teamwork: adjust, test, step back, move again. No committee. No waiting for permission. Just a group of skaters making the spot work because the session was not finished with it yet.
Then the music came back in and the double fired up again.
Tyresse, turned his battle into a storyline. Double flips started coming back to him. The three-shove landed with the kind of relief that makes the whole crowd feel like they rolled away too. Even the misses had weight because by that point nobody was watching casually. They were invested.
That is what made the session hit.
The makes were sick, but the battles had people cheering them on: Terry and Saeed getting the first solid bangers down the double, ollies and flips from the youngsters, Brad and Alex adding showstoppers, and the whole crowd pushing each attempt back up the run-up.
The double became a proving ground for the young ones and an exhibition of how good our local talent really is.
It was something special watching kids’ eyes light up while skating the same spot as their favourite skaters
The 11 stair Became the Ender
The mood shifted.
Eventually everyone drifted to the set that did not need an introduction.
Company’s Garden’s 11 stair.
By then the whole event had arrived. This was not a spot just anyone would skate. Spectators lined both sides. The parking area turned into a viewing platform. Photographers squeezed into every open inch. People who had followed from Thibault stood next to people who had only arrived because the noise pulled them in.
Josh looked down the set and shook his head.
“This whole set is madness.”
He was right.
A handful of skaters stared down the run-up. Madness down both sides. Madness in the landing. The DJ booth was set up at the bottom. Museum staff were in amongst the crowd. Skaters, cameras, parents, kids, tourists, filmers and friends all packed around a stair set that suddenly felt like the centre of Cape Town.
Brad Balie opened it with a big backside 180 and suddenly the final spot had a pulse. Siye kept the Joburg thread alive with the frontside 180. Byron, in the green top and red hat, stepped in with a massive kickflip. Tyresse kept fighting his front shove battle, getting the kind of crowd support that only happens when people care about the attempts as much as the makes.
That is skateboarding at its best.
Alex Williams did what Alex had been doing all day.
He went back up.
The switch flip down the 11 was ridiculous. Not just because it was huge, but because it came after a full day of him already putting down enough for anyone else to call it. He still had another one. He rolled away and the Garden lost its mind.
Saeed Waggie, a machine.
By this point, he had been in the story since the morning. In the mix at Thibault.
Every single spot at the Gardens.
The Big 5.
The double.
The 11.
Always there, always charging, always adding another reason for people to look up when he rolled in.
A run-up that felt like eternity.
Popped.
Caught.
Held.
And stomped with conviction.
For half a second the whole place froze in disbelief.
Then it exploded.
Boards went up. People rushed the landing. Hands slapped shoulders. Filmers tried not to get swallowed by the crowd. It looked less like a contest make and more like a scene realising, in real time, that it had just watched the ender.
Josh could barely get the words out.
“That’s the biggest hardflip I’ve ever seen!”
Before the noise had even settled, Claudio summed it up better than anyone else could.
“Somebody pay him!”
They did.
And then Grand Skate Tour did one better.
The Golden Ticket
Prize giving could have felt like a formality after a make like that.
It did not.
Saeed Waggie earned the Golden Ticket from Grand Skate Tour: an all-expenses-paid trip to Russia to compete on the international stage.
It did not feel random. It did not feel like one trick bought him a headline. It felt like the day had been building toward it. He had been in the mix from the first spot and kept going until there was nothing left to skate.
Before the product toss and final chaos, Kaylin Rucker, Chris Nderitu and Emrhys Stead brought the day back to something bigger than tricks, speaking on behalf of Skate Don’t Fade and in memory of Sebastian dos Santos. It was not a forced charity insert. It was a reminder that this scene carries its people with it, past, present and future.
Then came the beautiful mess at the end.
Shoes in the air. Decks getting passed forward. Kids grabbing gear. Skaters comparing cash. Filmers checking footage. Friends replaying tricks with their hands because words were not enough. People who had arrived as spectators leaving like they had been part of the session.
That is the part you cannot fake.
What the City Saw
Every Go Skateboarding Day deserves respect.
This one deserves a spot in Cape Town skate history.
Not because it had a prize purse. Not because it had a Golden Ticket. Not even because Saeed hardflipped the 11 and made the whole Garden run at him.
It matters because for one day, Cape Town did not treat skateboarding like something to manage, move along or hide in a corner.
Historic spots were opened. South African skateboarding came together and pushed each other all day. Cape Town, Kimberley, the Milltree crew, 20 Sk8, the Joburg crew, the young skaters from Ziyaad’s Skate School, the women holding it down, the legends, the filmers and the kids all shared the same ground. Passers-by became spectators. Spectators became fans. The city watched skating in its natural habitat and realised the chaos was the point.
This should not be remembered as a once-off.
It should be the benchmark.
More spots. More access. More women joining Boipelo on the run-up. More city sessions. More chances for kids to see that skateboarding belongs in the middle of Cape Town, not outside it.
21 June 2026 started with the Big 4 and ended with a hardflip into a crowd of people who did not want to leave.
That is skateboarding.
That is Go Skateboarding Day.
That is the version worth chasing again.
— Clued Skateboarding
