The mystery Spanish event that we had pencilled in for late June has now been confirmed: The Bilbao World SUP Challenge, part of the 2013 Stand Up World Series, will offer paddlers a very impressive $20,000 in prize money and the chance to race in a beautiful part of Europe.

The event, which was officially unveiled earlier today, is set for the Basque region of Spain from the 21st – 23rd of June. This comes on the tail end of the major European SUP racing season, which will see many of the world’s best competing for over $100,000 in prize money from the last weekend in May right through to the end of June. The fact it’s a World Series event will attract even more international talent.

Bilbao has the same team behind it as the Oleron Paddle Challenge (the SUP World Series event in France), with Frenchman Didier Lafitte running the event in conjunction with local SUP club BWaters and the World Series’ governing organisation: The Waterman League.

The $20,000 SUP race was revealed at a press conference today in a very fancy looking building in Bilbao, with local politicians and officials getting in on the act and ensuring this event will have a lot of exposure.

So start booking your tickets to Spain, it looks like this is going to be a big one…

We’ll keep you posted with more news about the 2013 Bilbao World SUP Challenge as it happens.