World Athletics Clears the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro 5, 26 Days Before Berlin

The Adizero Adios Pro 5, the next version of the racing shoe adidas sells in volume, has been cleared for road competition on World Athletics’ list of approved athletic shoes. The entry appeared without a word from adidas, and it carries a date that places the shoe on the market 26 days before the Berlin Marathon.

The listing is thin, which is normal. It records approval for “Road Races (including Track Race Walking Events),” a model number of ONN61, an alternative number of KI0940, and an availability date of Sept. 1, 2026. It gives no stack height, no weight and no price. World Athletics does not publish the date on which a shoe was approved, only the date the manufacturer says it goes on sale, so the claim circulating on social media that the Pro 5 was approved on Sept. 1 is not something the list supports. The two dates are unrelated.

The entry is more revealing in what it leaves out. The Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, the $500 shoe Sabastian Sawe and Yomif Kejelcha wore to break two hours in London in April, appears on the same list three times: once as a retail model and twice more as ADIZERO ADIOS PRO EVO 3 DEV and EVO 3 DEV1. Those are development shoes, and under World Athletics’ shoe regulations they are never sold, expire 12 months after listing, and cannot be worn at the Olympics, the World Championships or any World Athletics Series event. The Pro 5 carries no development entry. On paper it is a retail shoe, which is what the Adios Pro line has always been.

What a Sale Date Is Worth

Recent evidence suggests very little. The availability date is a declaration by the manufacturer, and the regulations require only that an approved shoe be purchasable before the first ranking competition an athlete wears it in. World Athletics lists the Evo 3 as available from March 24. Adidas in fact sold it on April 25, in what the company called “limited pairs,” two days after announcing it and one day before Sawe ran 1:59:30. Pairs resold for thousands of dollars.

The Pro 5’s date has already passed and the shoe is not on sale anywhere. Adidas.com currently lists one Adios Pro, the Pro 4, at $255.

These dates only became useful recently. The Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1 still shows an availability date of Dec. 31, 1999, the placeholder World Athletics applied to everything approved before March 2024.

The Pro 4 Followed the Same Calendar

The Adios Pro 4 was listed as available from Aug. 28, 2024. Adidas announced it a month later, saying it would debut at the Berlin Marathon that weekend, and put it in shops the following January at $250. The gap between the filed date and the Berlin start line was 32 days. This year it is 26. Marathon Handbook’s forecast of the fall racing calendar, published Aug. 1, gave a Berlin launch a 90 percent probability on that precedent.

Berlin Without Its Headliner

The Berlin Marathon runs Sept. 27, and adidas is a main sponsor of the race. The complication is the field. Sawe, the world record holder and the obvious athlete to carry a new shoe, withdrew on Aug. 27 with an injury that organizers declined to specify, five days before the Pro 5 surfaced on the list. Gabriel Geay and Guye Adola now lead the men’s elite field at 2:03:00 and 2:03:46.

Tigst Assefa remains, and she is the most prominent adidas runner left in the race. She set the world record in Berlin in 2:11:53 in 2023, ran 2:15:41 in London in the Evo 3, and says she will attack the record again.

Adidas has said nothing about the Pro 5, and its running newsroom has not mentioned the shoe once. It did say something relevant in April, on the day it announced the Evo 3: limited pairs first, “followed by a wider release in the fall marathon season.” The fall marathon season opens in Berlin in 26 days.