The race to create the world’s fastest running shoe has become something of an obsession among the world’s biggest sports brands. It dates back to the release of Nike’s Vaporfly in 2017, dubbed the first “supershoe” thanks to its ultra-lightweight form and performance that could help elite runners push their marathon times to new realms. Today, Adidas has intensified the battle by releasing its lightest-ever shoe, the new Pro Evo 3 — weighing in at 97 grams (0.2 pounds) for a sample size UK 8.5. (Most normal running shoes weigh between 184g and 368g.)

After three years in development, Adidas says its new shoe is 30% lighter than its predecessor and boasts a 1.6% improvement in “running economy”, the critical measure for how the structure of a running shoe impacts running speed by improving the energy return for every strike of a runner’s foot to the ground. This is thanks to a new form of lighter-than-ever foam in the sole combined with a minimal carbon plate around the midsole’s rim only. Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe will be the first athlete to wear the Pro Evo 3 in a race at the London marathon on April 26 — a key date in the running calendar for pushing new record times. A limited 200-pair drop of the $500 shoes are on sale to the public from today, before it becomes more widely available come fall.

“It’s as close to handcrafted as it gets when it comes to mass production, so we can only produce a certain amount in any given month,” says Marc Makowski, Adidas’s innovation chief, who says the intricacies of the shoe’s production are akin to that of a luxury car. “Once you touch it, it honestly feels weightless. It’s set a new bar when it comes to both being the fastest and the lightest shoe at the same point in time. Every piece of the shoe has been engineered with speed in mind: it’s all about how do we achieve the fastest-possible time in the course of a marathon, ever.”

The difference of one gram in a sneaker’s weight can mean seconds shaved off of a marathon time. This type of performance datum was previously of interest only to the most intense runners; now, the sport has taken over mainstream culture. The global running gear market is projected to reach almost $70 billion by 2032, up from $45 billion in 2024. It’s unclear how much of that has to do with Harry Styles’s newfound running obsession, but Gen Z’s health and fitness obsession is going a long way in fueling the industry’s growth. Gen Z runners made up the biggest cohort (25%) of those in the 2025 New York marathon, where only 17% of runners were under 30 in 2022. Gen Z have also accounted for a large part of the almost 10 million pairs of Adidas’s more affordable supershoe, the $150 Evo SL, which were sold by the end of 2025.

All this means running is huge business in 2026 — which strengthens the case for sports brands’ significant investment in footwear technology to win the supershoe race. Here, Vogue Business sits down with Adidas’s general manager of running Patrick Nava and innovation chief Marc Makowski to find out how — and why — the brand spent the last three years investing in the tech behind the new Pro Evo 3.

Vogue: What is so significant about the launch of the Pro Evo 3?

Marc: First of all, the foam is obviously a critical piece. We’ve created the next generation of our Lightstrike Pro Evo foam, which is nearly 50% lighter than its predecessor and automatically drives the whole weight further down. Then, beyond weight, what’s also critical is the construction. How do we achieve a high level of “defoamation” — the spring effect we see from compressing the foam. That’s balanced out with the right level of stiffness via how we’ve changed the construction of the carbon stiffening element. It’s a totally new interplay of the carbon just around the rim of the midsole, beneath the foam, which allows for massive compression under the foot while keeping the maximum level of stability and stiffness at the same point in time.

We took the very same thinking into the upper ear of the shoe, working with a totally new sense of materialization, inspired by the sailing and kite surfing industry, and really looking at what’s the lightest possible material, via ripstop textiles that also feature polyester yarns — which have 1.5x the kind of strength of a regular yarn. Again, that combines the lightest weight possible with the highest level of stability. Every component was chosen through the lens of: how do we achieve the fastest possible with the lightest possible?

Vogue: A decrease by a third in weight is huge. What’s accelerated in footwear technology to make that happen? Can things get even lighter?

Marc: Back when we first started making supershoes, we had very few materials that were available to produce the individual foams. Now, there’s a magnitude of different materials available, and composites like carbon fiber have also improved further from a weight perspective.

When we look at the shoe upper, we’ve gone beyond materials we’ve used before, and taken inspiration from other industries, like sailing and kite surfing, which are exposed to extreme wind conditions and need to be ultra-light. I don’t see things accelerating much more beyond the sub-100 gram weight we’re now at, simply because there isn’t too much more you can strip from a product like this. Though, we do have several prototypes in the works now, based on the Pro Evo 3, which are the next product, tweaking other elements. So there’s no finish line.

I think we’re going to see more of the four-minute mile effect. At some point, the two-hour marathon mark is going to be broken for men. And I would argue that at the moment, we’re close. I think once the first athlete breaks it, quite a few are going to follow.

Vogue: What was the technical and commercial motivation behind setting the aggressive target of moving lower than 100 grams?

Patrick: From a technical standpoint, there’s scientific literature that says for every 100 grams you can cut from a shoe’s weight, you improve the running economy by 1%. [In simple terms, the heavier a running shoe, the harder a runner has to work, and so the more energy and oxygen is needed — i.e., worse running economy.] So we went from 300g to 200g, and we were then at 130g. So 100g was the last frontier when it comes to sheer weight reduction in terms of the influence on how fast the shoe can go. Once you go from 100g to 50g, the impact is a little bit less relevant. Now, we’re under that critical frontier. But weight is a means, not an end. The end was to make the fastest shoe possible. One of the ways to get there was to get under 100g.

Commercially, we think of Adidas running as at the forefront of innovation and culture. Given the size of the company we are, we are lucky enough that we can pour resources into investing in footwear technology. In a category like running shoes, which is so technical, that investment gives us an advantage. At the same time, over the last couple of years, running has gone from being a niche, nerdy sport to a mass sport. That’s been influenced by many other aspects that speak to culture like mindfulness and wellbeing in general. So being able to influence that culture from a design perspective is critical for us, too.

Vogue: Obviously, the AI wearable health tracking space was born from running. In a few years time, is there a world where AI data collection is integrated into running shoes, to improve performance?

Marc: AI and being able to track more relevant athlete data has been critical to arriving at a product like this, given how much we work with athletes and engage with their performance data to inform decisions around materials in the product.

More broadly, we obviously monitor that space [AI wearables] very closely in terms of what is possible from a technology perspective. I would say one of the critical aspects we always go back to is this notion of what’s best both for the elite athlete and the regular runner. There’s so many tracking opportunities out there, so it’s about how do we incorporate something meaningful into shoes and apparel that will bring an actual additional benefit beyond that. We already use AI in the way we design, we validate designs, we create copy, we create imagery. So AI is pretty much already a large contributor of how we create the products right now.

Vogue: Running is obviously going from strength to strength as a category right now. How important is it to the wider Adidas business?

Patrick: In terms of participation, it’s probably the largest sporting goods market you’re looking at. I’m not talking about lifestyle, but performance products. So yes, it is definitely one of the key priorities for the company in the coming years. We see a massive opportunity to build more solutions and cater to different types of runners — from elite to Couch to 5k.