Our Team Picks The Best Running Shoes Of 2025

Every December, our team ends up in the same place: a table (or a podcast studio) cluttered with foam samples, half-destroyed prototypes, and the shoes that survived our mileage.

There’s always one pair with the outsole worn bald from Alex’s threshold workouts, another stained with the dust of trail shakeouts Katelyn took a little too seriously, and at least one shoe Michael forgot he tested until he looks at the midsole and says, “Oh right! That was actually pretty good.”

This year, though, the conversation felt different. We weren’t talking about incremental improvements or “nice” updates. The story of 2025 was that running shoes finally broke out of their predictable evolutionary arc.

Instead of just adding more stack height or mixing the same foams in slightly different proportions, brands got weird… in a good way.

The shoes that stuck with us weren’t necessarily the flashiest ones. They were the ones that pushed ideas forward, the ones that proved a company’s philosophy wasn’t just marketing copy, and the ones that runners everywhere actually wore.

What follows is less a verdict and more a record of the moment: the picks that rose above the noise and defined 2025.

Best New Shoe

Winner: ASICS MegaBlast

If you had told us a year ago that ASICS would somehow find room between the Superblast and the Novablast for another maximal trainer, we would’ve assumed it was a placeholder.

Instead, we got a shoe that felt like someone took the Superblast, re-tuned the ride, sharpened the feel, and somehow made it more runnable.

The magic is FF Blast², the aliphatic TPU foam that manages to be lightweight and springy without tipping into mush. There’s an elasticity to it that works on easy days, but the shoe doesn’t collapse when you pick up the pace, which is rare in a shoe aimed squarely at the middle of a runner’s weekly mileage.

You can jog in it. You can roll through a marathon-pace workout in it. You can do the somewhat irresponsible thing and race a 10-miler in it.

It became the shoe you see everywhere: on first-time 5K runners, on pros during long warmups, and on anyone who’s realized that most of the magic in this sport actually happens on the days no one notices.

Runner-Up: Adidas Adizero Evo SL

The Evo SL is the quiet star of the year, the shoe sitting on the floor of every serious runner’s hotel room on race weekend.

It’s simple: a featherweight upper, a tall bevel of Lightstrike Pro, zero plate. That’s the point. No gimmicks, no carbon geometry, no need to explain the design. Just pure, clean rebound and a shape that lets your stride be your stride.

If the MegaBlast is the Swiss Army knife, the Evo SL is the chef’s knife. Something you reach for because it always feels right in your hand.

Best Everyday Trainer

Winner: Nike Vomero 18

Nike had been overdue for a proper daily trainer renaissance. The Vomero 18 became that moment.

The shoe is soft where it needs to be, gently firm where it should be, and, crucially, durable enough to handle 400–500 miles without losing its character. It blends a grown-up comfort with a bit of hidden sharpness, the kind of ride that encourages you to squeeze the pace down without requiring it.

It took Alex a few runs to understand it, but Michael wouldn’t stop talking about it for months. But once the shoe settled in, it became a rare unifying pick, the kind of trainer that reminds you why “daily trainer” used to be the most important category in running.

Runner-Up: Brooks Glycerin 22

Brooks didn’t blow anything up here. They just modernized the formula. The nitrogen-infused DNA Loft v3 gives the Glycerin 22 enough rebound to avoid feeling dated while keeping that classic Brooks ease.

It’s the shoe you put on at 6 a.m. when you’re tired, under-caffeinated, and simply need something dependable.

Best Stability Shoe

Winner: HOKA Arahi 9

Stability shoes used to be the broccoli of the running world, good for you, rarely exciting.

The Arahi 9, somehow, is both. HOKA trimmed it to 9.9 ounces, kept the geometry that gently corrals pronators without punishing neutral runners, and created a ride that feels much more modern than the word “stability” suggests.

It’s smooth. It’s predictable. And it’s the most enjoyable stability shoe we ran in all year.

Runner-Up: ASICS GEL-Kayano 32

The Kayano 32 isn’t light, but it’s lighter than the old days, and with ASICS’ modern foams, it rides like a polished long-distance cruiser.

Think of it as the reliable friend who always shows up early, remembers your birthday, and brings snacks.

Best Super Trainer

Winner: ASICS SonicBlast

Super trainers have become the wild west: 50 mm stacks, plates that look like they were pulled from architecture firms, prices that could pay a month’s rent. The SonicBlast cut through that chaos by actually feeling… logical.

Two layers of foam (FF Blast and FF Turbo 2) with a Pebax plate sandwiched inside. Stable enough to hammer long runs, responsive enough for threshold, and protective enough that you don’t feel trashed afterward. It’s the closest thing this category has had to a gold-standard definition.

Runner-Up: Adidas Adizero Evo SL

Yes, again. The truth is that “super trainer” means different things to different runners, and for a large group of them, a lightweight slab of Lightstrike Pro is the perfect workout shoe.

Best Super Shoe

Winner: Adidas Adios Pro Evo 2

This category wasn’t easy, because Puma threw a grenade into the arms race this spring, but the Pro Evo 2 remains the purest expression of super-shoe performance on earth.

The evidence is the podiums.

You don’t dominate Berlin, London, New York, Chicago, and dozens of World Athletics Gold Label races unless your product is doing something no one else has figured out.

The Pro Evo 2 didn’t reinvent its geometry so much as refine it, and the rebalanced forefoot foam gives it that eerie sensation of being propelled rather than assisted.

It’s maddeningly difficult for everyday runners to get, and it dissolves faster than cotton candy in a puddle. But best is best, and this shoe is still the one that scares other brands.

Runner-Up: Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 3

And yet… if there was one shoe that changed the conversation, it was the Fast-R 3.

Seven-layer carbon plate. Aggressive midsole cutouts. A geometry that looks like it escaped from a wind-tunnel experiment. And unlike many strange shoes, this one actually delivered.

The marathon world wasn’t expecting Puma to come back swinging, but here they are, relevant again because they dared to build something strange.

Alex races in this. Enough said.

Most Innovative Shoe

Winner: Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 3

Innovation isn’t about marketing. It’s about someone inside a design lab asking, “What if?” and then being allowed to build it.

The Fast-R is exactly that kind of shoe. The layered plate, the split midsole, the stripped-down weight under six ounces, it looks like a track spike that grew up and decided to run a marathon.

Whether this is the direction the sport goes next is still unclear, but this is the shoe every competitor examined, sketched, and quietly tried to decode.

Runner-Up: Nike Vomero Premium

The most polarizing shoe of the year. You either felt like you were running on a trampoline engineered by a physics student with limitless ambition… or you felt like you were fighting a waterbed strapped to your feet.

But innovation means risk, and Nike took a big one. The Premium is a peek at where the brand might take its future cushioning concepts, even if this version feels like an over-caffeinated proof of concept.

Best Shoe Lineup of the Year

Winner: Nike Vomero Collection (18, Plus, Premium)

Nike spent years in a rut. The Pegasus felt stuck and the ZoomX lineup was confusing even for people who write about shoes for a living.

Then 2025 happened.

The Vomero lineup, the standard 18, the beefed-up Plus, and the bizarre Premium, became a cohesive story. The 18 anchored it. The Plus stretched the idea into super-trainer territory. And the Premium showed what Nike cooks up when no one in the building tells them “no.”

It was the loudest, clearest identity they’ve had in years. And, frankly, it was fun.

Runner-Up: ASICS MetaSpeed (Sky, Edge, Ray)

Three different takes on a super shoe, each built for a different kind of stride.

The Sky for stride-length runners. The Edge for cadence-based. And the Ray for elites who live in a different biomechanical universe altogether.

It’s meticulous, thoughtful engineering, even if the Ray will never be seen on most people’s feet.

Shoe of the Year

Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 3

The question we kept asking ourselves wasn’t “What’s the fastest shoe?” It was “What changed the sport this year?”

The Fast-R 3 did. It forced other brands to re-evaluate assumptions. It reminded the world that innovation doesn’t belong solely to Nike, ASICS, or adidas. It dragged Puma, a brand that had been drifting for a decade, right back into the heart of the marathon conversation.

It wasn’t the safest pick. It wasn’t the most obvious pick. But it was the shoe we talked about more than any other, argued about more than any other, and kept returning to when we asked what defined 2025.

Brand of the Year

ASICS

Two years in a row.

The case is simple: ASICS has no weak spots.

• They have a top-tier super shoe (actually three of them).
• They have the best new shoe of the year.
• They have the best super trainer.
• They have the most consistent daily trainers in the sport.
• And their foam development this year, FF Turbo 2, FF Blast², shows a company not just iterating, but leading.

Nike was loud. Puma was surprising. Adidas was dominant on race day.

ASICS was complete.

That’s why they win again.

What This Year Really Says About Running

Running shoes are in a rare moment: competition is fierce, runners are savvier, and the line between “performance tech” and “everyday shoe” has blurred in ways we couldn’t have imagined ten years ago.

The story of 2025 wasn’t carbon plates or stack heights or weight savings. It was creativity. Brands freed themselves from the idea that a shoe has to look a certain way or behave a certain way. And now, for the first time in a long time, it feels like the next five years could be wildly different depending on who bets right.

We’ll see those bets in a few days, when we’re walking the floor in San Antonio at The Running Event, touching prototypes we can’t talk about yet, asking engineers uncomfortable questions, and trying very hard not to get kicked out of booths.

But for now: these are the shoes that defined the year. Your miles may vary, and that’s exactly how it should be.