Top 5 Running Shoe Trends of 2025
Here we are looking at the top 5 trends in running shoes in 2025. We are seeing daily trainers with more foam, like the Nike Vomero Plus; crazy lightweight racers like the Puma Fast-R 3; new companies debuting instant hits like the R.A.D UFO; midfoot bumps in shoes like the Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro 3; and companies testing out new categories like with the Nike Streakfly 2.
Running shoes are evolving so fast that 2025 already feels like a reset button for the whole industry. We’re watching daily trainers turn into max-stack monsters while still borrowing speed tech from race shoes. Brands are pushing past 40mm, mixing plates, and blending categories that used to be completely separate. The wild part is that almost every company is taking a different approach, which means we get more options and more personality in what we run in. It’s easily one of the most innovative years we’ve seen in a long time.
1. Blurred Lines
In 2025, we saw a blurring of traditional running shoe categories. Many daily trainers now have more than 40mm of foam, making them creep into the max cushion shoe category, like the Nike Vomero Plus and the ASICS Megablast. And many daily trainers and max stack shoes also have speed training elements like extremely responsive foams or midsoles made from race foams, like in the Adidas EVO SL.
Nike Vomero Plus
ASICS Megablast
Adidas Evo SL
2. The Midfoot Bump
This year, brands stuffed more foam in the midfoot of many of their shoes and applied aggressive heel bevels. Not only did we see this in race shoes to potentially get around the stack height rules, such as in the ASICS Metaspeed Ray and Mizuno Wave Rebellion Pro 3, but also in shoes like the Hoka Cielo X1 2.0 and daily trainers like the new R.A.D UFO.
Hoka Cielo X1 2.0
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ASICS Metaspeed Ray
R.A.D UFO
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3. Specialization
Brands are giving themselves permission to develop and release shoes with increasingly specific and niche use cases. Gone are the days where we train in the Pegasus and race in the Vaporfly. Now we have the Nike Streakfly 2, specifically designed for 1 mile up to 5k road races, the Adidas Adios 9 for interval-style workouts, the Adidas Prime X 3 Strung for long runs, and the Nike Vomero Premium for recovery runs.
Nike Streakfly 2
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Adidas Adios 9
Adidas Prime X 3 Strung
Nike Vomero Premium
4. Speed at All Costs
The pursuit of speed was the overarching theme of the year. While last year, max cushion cruisers like the ASICS Superblast 2, Puma MagMax, and Brooks Glycerin Max dominated the conversation, the zeitgeist was captured this year by speedy shoes like the Adidas EVO SL and the demon-time Puma Fast-R 3.
Adidas Evo SL
Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 3
5. The Year of the Underdog
Nike, Adidas, and Brooks still dominate in sales and traffic, but smaller and challenger brands hit the scene in full force with quality shoes this year. Skechers, TYR with the Maverick-V1 Runner, R.A.D with the UFO, Salomon with the Aero Glide 3, and Tracksmith with the Eliot Racer all had awesome releases that competed with the big brands.
TYR Maverick-V1 Runner
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Salomon Aero Glide 3
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R.A.D UFO
Tracksmith Eliot Racer
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