TIME Names the Adidas Adios Pro Evo 3 One of the Best Inventions of 2026

The Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, the shoe Sabastian Sawe was wearing in April when he won the London Marathon in 1:59:30, is one of TIME‘s Best Inventions of 2026. The magazine released its annual list on Thursday, and its write-up of the shoe rests on Sawe’s run and on just how little it weighs.

The first Adios Pro Evo was on the same list in 2023, a few weeks after Tigst Assefa wore it to break the women’s world record in Berlin with 2:11:53. That shoe weighed 138 grams, and the Evo 3 comes in 41 grams under it. The new shoe had already picked up one design prize this year: Fast Company named it the winner of the product design category in its Innovation by Design awards on Sept. 14.

How Adidas Got It Under 100 Grams

In the launch announcement for its first running shoe under 100 grams, Adidas gave the average weight as 97 grams, measured on sample pairs in a UK size 8.5, which makes it 30 percent lighter than the Evo 2. Much of that comes out of the midsole, where a new foam, Lightstrike Pro Evo, weighs nearly half as much as the versions before it. A carbon frame Adidas calls the EnergyRim runs around that foam to hold it together and set the stiffness, Continental rubber covers only parts of the forefoot, and the upper borrows its design from kitesurfing sails. The stack is 39mm at the heel and 36mm at the forefoot.

Adidas says the shoe returns 11 percent more energy at the forefoot than the Evo 2 and improves running economy by 1.6 percent, after three years of work and more than a dozen versions tested in its labs in Herzogenaurach, Germany, and at altitude camps in Kenya and Ethiopia.

“Our goal was two digits on the scale, with better performance than we’ve ever had,” Stephan Scholten, its vice president of product, said at the launch. TIME describes the Evo 3 as the lightest running shoe ever made; Adidas’ own claim at launch was a little narrower, that it is the lightest and fastest shoe in its Adizero line.

Seven of the Year’s 12 Major Wins

Yomif Kejelcha also broke two hours in London, finishing only 11 seconds behind Sawe in 1:59:41 in the same shoe, and Assefa wore it that day to set a women-only world record of 2:15:41. Eliud Kipchoge had run 1:59:40 in Vienna in 2019, but with rotating pacers and bottles handed over from a bike, his run was never eligible as a record, which leaves Sawe’s as the first sub-two in a race.

Adidas runners in the Evo 3 have since taken seven of the 12 Major races this year, both races in London, Berlin and Chicago and the women’s race in Sydney, and in Berlin all six podium finishers wore it. Hawi Feysa and Amos Kipruto won Chicago in it on Oct. 11, as our look at the podium shoes showed.

The Evo 3 costs $500, and getting a pair has been hard from the start: the April release sold out almost at once, and resale listings went past $5,000. It returns on Oct. 29 on adidas.com in the U.S., according to Sports Illustrated, followed by a limited run at running specialty stores, including Fleet Feet and Heartbreak Hill, and at the New York City Marathon expo ahead of the race on Nov. 1. Anyone who misses out has the $275 Adios Pro 5, the heavier racer Adidas built on much the same shape.