By Six Minute Mile Staff

We spent several days this week like kids in a candy store roaming through trade show booths at The Running Event in Austin, Texas. It’s an annual trade show of running shoe and apparel manufacturers (and also for race directors, some outdoor brands, and a few pickleball companies, too!) and it’s the place where retailers, running media, social media influencers, and content creators get to see a lot of next year’s gear for the first time.

Some of the shoes have already been leaked on social media or released in small quantities – for example the Adidas Adizero Evo SL performance trainer – but most of the shoes have never been seen and, to be honest, are quite drool-worthy. There’s too much to report about here (and we might be too tired and hungover from Thursday night’s Brooks party that featured Austin’s pop punk and emo cover band Y’all Out Boy) but we’ll tease you with a few highlights as you head into your weekend.

What were the top trends we observed? Many shoes are getting lighter and more responsive, and while some are getting more stack height (i.e. over 40mm in the heel), we saw a few getting lower to the ground for better stability and performance. (We’re looking at you, Norda 005!) The hot trend in foams is clearly that more brands are using lighter and more responsive TPEE compounds (thermoplastic polyester elastomer) like Adidas’ Lightstrike Pro foam. Saucony’s Endorphin Elite 2 is one of the most notable of the new racing shoes with TPEE midsole foam (Saucony is calling it “Incredirun” foam) that will debut in March.

There are several new trail running super shoes coming in 2025. X Bionic, a Swiss brand known for its performance-oriented compression socks and apparel, showed off its new trail running shoe that was designed to work in concert with its socks. The TerraSkin XOO C ($300, compression socks included) has a highly responsive midsole, a carbon-fiber plate, and a rugged outsole that’s built into a lower foot cradle that supports a runner’s feet on off-camber terrain. Puma is taking its success in marathon racing shoes out onto the trails with the launch of the Deviate Nitro Elite Trail super shoe ($230), a 9.1-ounce shoe with 36mm/30mm stack heights. Two other new wildly responsive, high-stacked super shoes for the trails are the LaSportiva Prodigio Pro ($195) and the On Cloudultra Pro ($260).

Speedland is launching its first road shoe in April. The RX:FPY is a maximally cushioned shoe built on a unique uncompressed supercritical foam that’s moderately light (8.0 oz.) and exceptionally lively with a near-custom Speedland fit secured by a singular BOA Li2 closure system. It has a removable carbon-fiber plate (and an expected $299 price tag!), but it’s more geared to be a speedy trainer than a race-day shoe.

Last but certainly not least, we also saw several shoes we can’t talk about here – at least not in specific details. But let’s just say several brands have fast and light carbon-plated racing shoes that should make a huge splash. Asics has a very fast and extremely light racing shoe (under 5 ounces!) that will be officially announced in the late spring in advance of next summer’s World Athletics Championships in Tokyo. Brooks will have its long-awaited Hyperion Elite 5 marathon super shoe out in the summer with a new midsole Peba foam called DNA Gold and orb-like design element in a cutaway section of the midsole, while New Balance will release its long-awaited FuelCell SuperComp Elite v5 next summer. Finally, Nike’s Vomero Plus is a high-stack lightweight performance trainer that doesn’t have a carbon-plate (so it’s probably not going to be a race-day choice for many runners), but it’s very light and very propulsive and should be one of the top speed-day training shoes that comes out next year.