Nike Unveils Two New Super Shoes, the Apex and the Swooshfly

Nike unveiled two new racing shoes on Wednesday that sit at opposite ends of its marathon range: the Apex, a zero-drop racer carrying the most forefoot Air the company has put in a running shoe, and the Swooshfly, a carbon-plated shoe for first-time marathoners that will sell for $145. The Apex goes on sale through nike.com and select stores in January 2027. The Swooshfly launches in China in February and reaches the rest of the world in the spring.

Between the two sits the Alphafly 4, which sold out in under five minutes in its limited Sept. 17 release at $280 and goes on wider sale Oct. 29. Nike has grouped the three into what it calls a “race-day system of speed,” with each shoe pitched at a different kind of runner and race.

Four Air Zoom Units Sit Under the Apex Forefoot

The Apex uses the same Air Zoom construction Nike introduced in the Alphafly 4, but where that shoe has two units, the Apex has four, arranged in two pairs with one stacked on the other and left on show through the side of the midsole. ZoomX LT, the lighter race foam that also arrived with the Alphafly 4, fills the midsole below them, and a carbon Flyplate curves over the top to press into the Air as the foot loads. The shoe stands 40mm tall at both the heel and the forefoot. That is exactly the maximum World Athletics allows for road shoes, and it leaves the Apex with no drop at all.

Nike says the Apex returns up to 40 percent more energy than the Alphafly 3 in a men’s size 10 while weighing more than 10 percent less. Its benchmark is the previous Alphafly rather than the one going into stores this fall, which Nike already credits with 10 percent more energy return than the Alphafly 3, and the company has yet to give the Apex’s weight in grams or its price.

Drawings from a Nike patent for a double-stacked airbag, filed in November 2025, turned up on Instagram with the Apex name attached well before Nike said anything about the shoe. Jacob Kiplimo, a Nike athlete, said he raced in Nike prototypes both when he ran 57:20 for the half-marathon world record in Lisbon in March and when he ran 2:00:28, his marathon best, to finish third in London in April. “The best innovations are the ones that let you focus less on what’s happening beneath your feet and more on the challenge in front of you,” he said, adding that this is what the Apex does.

The Swooshfly Will Cost $145

That price puts the Swooshfly $105 under the cheapest shoe in Marathon Handbook’s accessible super shoe rankings this spring, where nothing came in below $250. Nike also says it measured up to 16 percent more energy return than the Vaporfly 4, a shoe that cost $260 at launch, in a men’s size 10.

Nike’s product team built the shoe around feedback from marathoners in China, where the Chinese Athletics Association counted 749 certified road races in 2024 with more than 7.04 million participants, according to China Daily. Nike’s materials describe all 749 as marathons, though the association’s count also takes in half-marathons and shorter road events. The same report put the average marathon finish in China that year at 4:07:01. The runner Nike had in mind finishes in around four and a half hours and takes about 55,000 steps to get there, close to double the 28,000 or so the company counts for Eliud Kipchoge.

For that runner, Nike cut the carbon plate down to five layers of carbon fiber against eight in the Alphafly and Vaporfly, the count wear-testers settled on after repeated trials at Nike’s Sport Research Lab in Shanghai. The last is new too, wider through the midfoot and lower in the arch, after runners told Nike that racing shoes felt narrow and rubbed. The midsole is a new foam called SkyX, made from TPU beads steamed to different densities at the heel, around the plate and under the forefoot, and Nike’s GOATEK rubber covers the front of the outsole for grip at wet aid stations. Nike has not published a weight or a stack height.

“Runners often think that paying less means you get less,” said Ryan Shi, a product lead on Nike’s running team. “But with this shoe, you get everything you need to do more.”

The Swooshfly took about a year to develop, roughly half Nike’s usual time for a new model, and Bret Schoolmeester, vice president of Nike Running Footwear, said SkyX is already headed for future Nike running shoes that have no plate at all. The Apex reaches stores first, in January, with the Swooshfly landing in China a month later.