Which shoes won the 2026 World Marathon Majors? Adidas takes 64% of victories

The 2026 World Marathon Majors season concluded in New York on Sunday, bringing to an end an extraordinary year for elite distance running. Sabastian Sawe had broken the two-hour barrier in London, Tigst Assefa had produced two remarkable performances in London and Berlin, and Andreas Almgren had capped the season with a stunning marathon debut in New York.

Behind these performances, another competition was taking place. The world's leading footwear manufacturers were battling for supremacy, introducing increasingly sophisticated racing shoes and investing heavily in the athletes wearing them.

With the final Major completed, Sub-3 has examined the footwear worn by the men's and women's winners across the seven races contested in 2026. The findings reveal an emphatic winner in the battle between the brands, although they also raise some interesting questions about the direction of marathon footwear technology.

Adidas wins the battle of the brands

Of the 14 men's and women's victories available across the seven World Marathon Majors, Adidas claimed nine, representing 64.3% of the total. Nike finished second with three victories, while ASICS and Under Armour secured one apiece.

Adidas's dominance extended beyond the winners. Of the 42 podium positions available across the seven races, its athletes occupied 21, exactly half the total. Nike secured eight podium positions and ASICS five, with Under Armour, On, Brooks and Xtep sharing the remaining eight.

The figures represent a strengthening of Adidas's position. In 2025, the company won seven of the 14 races and occupied 18 podium positions. Its share of victories has therefore increased from 50% to 64%, with a corresponding improvement in its presence across the podiums.

But the most striking finding concerns one particular shoe: the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3.

The shoes worn by all 14 winners

The extraordinary rise of the Adios Pro Evo 3

Adidas introduced the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 ahead of the London Marathon in April. It subsequently became the defining racing shoe of the 2026 season, accounting for eight of the ten men's and women's Major victories contested following its introduction.

Its arrival coincided with one of the most significant performances in marathon history. Sabastian Sawe ran 1:59:30 in London, becoming the first athlete to complete a record-eligible marathon in under two hours. Runner-up Yomif Kejelcha also broke the two-hour barrier, finishing just 11 seconds behind Sawe. Both wore the new Adidas shoe.

In the women's race, Tigst Assefa wore the same model as she improved the women-only world record to 2:15:41. The performances provided Adidas with an extraordinary launch for its latest racing technology.

The Pro Evo 3 weighs approximately 97 grams in a men's US size 9.5, making it exceptionally light even by modern supershoe standards. It is also exceptionally expensive, retailing for around $500 in the United States, and has been difficult to obtain since its introduction.

The shoe's dominance continued throughout the autumn. At Berlin, every athlete on both the men's and women's podiums wore the Pro Evo 3, an extraordinary concentration of a single racing model among the world's best marathon runners.

Adidas subsequently claimed both victories in Chicago, before Sheila Chepkirui added another in New York.

Nike strikes back in New York

While Adidas dominated the overall standings, the final Major of the year provided an encouraging result for its principal rival.

Andreas Almgren won the New York City Marathon on his debut over the distance, running 2:06:01 in Nike's new Apex racing shoe. It represented the first World Marathon Major victory for a model that Nike had introduced only weeks earlier.

The Apex incorporates double-stacked Air Zoom units in the forefoot, a redesigned carbon-fibre plate and a new ZoomX LT midsole foam. It also features a zero-drop design, with a 40mm stack height at both the heel and forefoot.

Nike claims that the shoe delivers up to 40% more energy return than the Alphafly 3. That is a manufacturer-reported measure of the shoe's mechanical properties, however, and should not be confused with an equivalent improvement in running economy or marathon finishing times.

The Apex is scheduled for general release in January 2027, meaning that Almgren secured its first Major victory before ordinary runners could purchase it.

Nike's other victories came through Brigid Kosgei in Tokyo, wearing the Vaporfly 4, and Addisu Gobena in Sydney, wearing a development version of the Alphafly 4.

The continuing success of the Vaporfly is particularly notable. Despite the attention surrounding increasingly expensive and specialised racing shoes, the more established model remains competitive at the very highest level.

The growing importance of prototypes

One of the more interesting developments in elite marathon running is the increasing prevalence of footwear that is either unavailable to the public or differs from the versions sold commercially.

John Korir won Boston wearing an unreleased ASICS Metaspeed Sky prototype, while Addisu Gobena's Sydney victory came in a development version of Nike's Alphafly 4. Almgren's Apex was not yet commercially available when he won New York, while Assefa wore a development version of the Adidas Pro Evo 3 in Berlin.

These examples highlight the increasingly close relationship between elite competition and footwear research and development.

Marathon racing has become an important testing and marketing platform for manufacturers. Elite athletes provide feedback on new technologies, compete in prototypes and help establish the reputation of shoes that may subsequently become available to recreational runners.

The innovations keep coming. Hot on the heels of the Pro Evo 3's extraordinary success, Adidas launched the Adizero Adios Pro 5 in September 2026, incorporating technology developed for its record-breaking predecessor into a more accessible racing shoe. Weighing just 177g, some 12% less than the Pro 4, the new model also promises a 9% improvement in energy return, according to Adidas, demonstrating how quickly innovations developed for elite athletes are finding their way into commercially available footwear.

Does Adidas actually make the fastest marathon shoe?

The dominance of Adidas in 2026 is undeniable, but interpreting the results requires some caution.

Elite marathon runners do not independently select their preferred footwear from every model on the market. Most are contracted to manufacturers, with sponsorship agreements determining which brands they wear. Consequently, the number of victories secured by a particular shoe reflects the quality of the athletes wearing it as well as the technology itself.

This creates a significant limitation when comparing shoes through race results alone. If a manufacturer sponsors a particularly strong group of runners, its footwear is naturally more likely to appear at the front of major races.

The sample is also relatively small. Fourteen victories across seven events provide an interesting snapshot of the elite marathon landscape, but they do not constitute a controlled comparison of the relative performance advantages offered by different shoes.

None of this diminishes Adidas's achievements. The Pro Evo 3 has been worn in some extraordinary performances, and its repeated success provides compelling evidence that it is competitive at the highest level. What it cannot establish, on its own, is whether the shoe would produce better performances than its rivals when worn by the same athlete.

What does this mean for sub-three-hour marathon runners?

For runners targeting a sub-three-hour marathon, the proliferation of advanced racing shoes presents an increasingly complicated choice.

Elite performances provide useful information about the technologies being developed, but the demands placed on footwear by a world-class athlete running at 2:50/km are substantially different from those experienced by an amateur marathoner running at 4:15/km.

The lightest and most expensive shoe is not necessarily the most effective choice for every runner. Fit, comfort, stability, durability and individual running mechanics all influence how well a racing shoe performs over 42.2km.

There is also a considerable difference between purchasing a commercially available supershoe and spending several hundred pounds on an exceptionally specialised model developed primarily for elite competition.

For most competitive amateur runners, the most useful evidence will come from comparing shoes during training and evaluating how they perform over sustained efforts, rather than simply following the choices of sponsored professionals.

The 2026 World Marathon Majors have nevertheless demonstrated just how far racing footwear has developed. The combination of increasingly sophisticated technology and unprecedented elite performances suggests that the competition between manufacturers is intensifying rather than approaching its conclusion.

Adidas has emerged as the clear winner of the 2026 season. But with Nike's Apex arriving in January and other manufacturers continuing to develop their own racing technologies, the battle for supremacy in 2027 is already taking shape.