Our favourite running shoes of 2026 | Tom's full list of best running shoes this year

Hey, Tommy from The Run Testers. In this video series, we are each gonna be going through our favorite running shoes. So every year we do our best running shoes of the year and we also do our awards at the end of the year. But that means that we often don't get the opportunity to talk about the individual shoes that we all really like because we've all got different preferences. We've all got different shoes that we predominantly use for races and training. So in this series, we're gonna talk about our individual picks. Right, let's do mine. So race shoe. Now this is, we'll probably get a similar pick for this, but the Metaspeed Sky Tokyo and the Edge, I've not tested the Edge, but the other guys like that and it came up pretty much equal with the Sky, is my top shoe and has been for quite a long time. I don't think there's been a shoe that's come up in the past year that has been as good as the Metaspeed Sky Tokyo. It just has everything you could want. It's light on the feet, it's bouncy, it's smooth to run in, it's not too aggressive, but it is very poppy. It feels like it wants to make you run faster. It's just got everything. And I really like the foam in it as well. It just feels really, really bouncy, FF Leap. It's used across quite a few of the shoes that Asics have got now, but for me, it just works best when it is a top tier performance race shoe alongside that plate. For me, there is no better shoe out there if you are looking for a carbon plate performance race shoe that ticks all the boxes across any distance. I would pick this shoe for anything from 5K up to a marathon, and I'd be happy in all of those distances. So that is my top pick. There were a couple of other options that might run us up for this. I'm not always going to do runners up, but these two are quite high on the list. So the Suckling Endorphin Elite 3. I'm a bit of an anomaly in the group because I really like this shoe. I don't think anyone else picked this, but I just love soft, bouncy shoes, and they don't get much softer and bouncier than this shoe. I just found it to be really fun. I'd probably say it's not as poppy as the Metaspeed Sky Tokyo. If I was going for a PB at shorter distances, I'd probably go for the Metaspeed Sky Tokyo, but I've got Frankfurt coming up. I'm going to be deciding on what shoe to wear. I think this is one of the ones that will be at the top of the list because I just like, it's so much fun. And then the On Cloud Boom Stripe 2. This is a recent one that I've been testing, and it just works really well for me. I've really been enjoying this. I'm picking up my speed quite a bit at the moment, doing a lot of track training. I've been using this. I've been using it for park run, 10K, and I've just really been enjoying it. The other thing I like about it as well is that it has this full-length rubber on the outsole, which means that I don't destroy it like I do every other shoe going. So yeah, I really like that one as well. OK, for a value shoe, I don't think you're going to find anything better for your money than the Kip Run Kip Storm Tempo, and I'm talking specifically in the UK here. I know the price is a bit different in the US, but the cost of this shoe, just over £100, is unbelievable for what you get. It is comparable with the Super Blast 2, not the 3. That's a very different shoe. Comparable with the Super Blast 2, which is significantly more expensive, almost there with a shoe like the Mega Blast. The Mega Blast is a better shoe, but if you take off £100 from the Mega Blast and get this, you're getting a pretty similar shoe. This is a shoe that is really, it does one thing really, really well, which is that sort of tempo, long-distance effort where you want a consistent pace, you want to run quickly, and you want it to be smooth and comfortable. This is amazing for it. It's not the fastest interval shoe, I would say, but it's pretty good at it. For the price, you're getting a pretty good shoe for that. Easy runs, not bad either. It's still pretty nice and smooth. It's not got the softest midsole in, but it's absolutely fine. But for the price, you're not going to find a shoe that does tempo efforts as well as the Kip Run Kip Storm Tempo. It's absolutely fantastic. The only other runners-up I've got in this category, so Evo SL, that's just because it's very close to the tempo in terms of the sort of quality of performance that you're getting from it, but it is even cheaper. In most places, you can find this for like £60 in the UK, which is an absolute steal. I always tell most of my friends, if they don't have stability needs, because it is a bit wobbly, I always tell most of them who are looking for a cheap shoe, this is just a great option, especially if you're training for something. This is a fantastic training shoe to use alongside a race shoe. Also, you could race in it as well. It's very, very fast and enjoyable. And then just on the back of this, I've got the Puma Velocity Nitro 5, which is a bit different than these two, because it's not really a performance shoe. It's more like a daily comfortable shoe, but it's pretty good. It's pretty versatile, but this will no doubt go down in price very soon. You can probably find it cheaper already, but once this goes down, if you look at the four and the three, you could find that shoe around like £60, £70. For that price, the Velocity 5 is just, it's a nice little bit of an improvement on the four, but it's still a great value shoe. And if you're looking just for a daily shoe that can do loads of different things, comfortable, easy, everything like that, it's still a really, really good option and still comes in cheaper than most other shoes. OK, for my cushion shoe, and it's been a while since I've had this shoe in any of my lists, this is the Sockety Triumph 24. I really did like the 22. I just thought it was an awful shoe. Didn't feel fun. Didn't feel particularly nice in the cushioned way. Didn't feel like it was versatile. Didn't really have anything. And the thing that I used to love about the Triumph line is that it was great for easy runs, but also it just felt enjoyable if you wanted to pick up the pace a bit. Just an all-around great cushioned shoe. In this category, we're really looking for cushioning and comfort above all else. It's an easy day shoe. The Triumph 24, I'd say that it's just a solid easy day shoe now. It's a little bit versatile. The addition of Incredilux foam into this has made it significantly better than the 23, which was OK, but I didn't really enjoy it very much. Whereas now I think this is very much slightly versatile, but very, very comfortable easy day shoe. The foam is really balanced. It's nice and smooth. You get a little bit of bounce off the back of it. For me, the Triumph 24 is a return to form for the Triumph shoe, and I've been very much enjoying this for lots of nice easy runs. I'm marathon training at the moment, so I have been doing a lot of longer sessions where I'm just maintaining the pace. This is just very good for those consistent easy runs where you just wanna, something that rolls you through nicely, doesn't make you feel like you're too slow. It's just comfortable, cushioned, just very enjoyable. So yeah, my top pick was the Sock & Triumph 24, but I have also been testing the Hoka Clifton Pro, which I think is fantastic as well. I would say that it's a bit more versatile than the Sock & Triumph 24, but in this category, we're predominantly looking at cushioning and comfort, and I would say the Triumph 24 for me is better at cushioning and comfort and easy runs, whereas the Clifton Pro, a bit more versatile. I do feel I can pick up the pace a bit more in this, and I definitely think it's a very comfortable shoe. So yeah, big fan of the Clifton Pro. I don't know why they called it the Pro, because I don't think it really, it sounds like it's a performance shoe. I don't think it is. I think it's still very much a cushioned shoe, but it's a bit more versatile than Triumph 24, but the Triumph 24 for me is a bit more comfortable, probably a bit more stable as well. So we have two new categories this year. We've actually developed from having daily shoes and all-rounder shoes, because those categories have become really difficult to work out the difference between. So what we now have is daily shoe for general training, which is more for people who are looking for a daily shoe to tick off lots of different type of things, but really they're not skewing towards speed all the time, and we've got daily shoe speed. So for this one, daily shoe general training, we're looking at comfort, bit of versatility, do-it-all shoe that you can just, it's very accessible to a lot of people. So what I've gone for is the New Balance 1080 v15, and now this shoe I absolutely love. I think it's a very, very enjoyable, comfortable, bouncy shoe. It's got Infineon in, which is a phone that I really, really like. It's very soft, but it's also you get a lot of energy return back as well. It's great for just chowing through the miles in comfort, but also when you get it on, it does feel like it's helping you a bit as well. So if you're going out to do like a 10K, 15K, 20K, whatever, it feels like the shoe's helping you to do that. It's not a slow, easy day shoe that's just gonna just feel good and comfortable. It does feel like you're getting a little bit of responsiveness and a bit of bounce back from it. Very much enjoy the shoe. I think it's fantastic. It's my favorite of the 1080 lines ever. I didn't really like a lot of the earlier ones, but the 13 I really liked in the last version was pretty good, but I just love this Infineon phone. So for me, that is the top pick for the sort of general daily training. Other options that are in my list. The Asics Novoblast 6 I think is a fantastic update to the 5. It definitely feels a lot more versatile now. The FF Turbo Squared, which is the same thing you get in the Megablast, is really, it's not a load in it. There's only a bit in this front section of the shoe here, but it does make a difference. When you land and move off, it feels like there's a lot more of that foam in there than in reality there is. You can see the little section here where it is. So it's definitely a more versatile shoe now. It's still very nice for easy runs, still very nice for daily training, but it definitely feels like you can pick up the pace a bit more in it now. But I'd still say it's used towards the more consistent daily efforts. I wouldn't say it's a speed shoe, but it's definitely more versatile than the previous versions. The other shoe I put in here, which I did put into my list when we were doing this, is the Deodora Corsa. Now, this is a new edition, which I probably would have put in sort of the third place in our rankings. This is a new shoe from Deodora, and it has this Anima N2 midsole foam in it, which it's not as soft as the Nova Blast or the 1080 V15, but it's quite balanced. It does feel like you can pick up the pace nicely in it. It's very much a daily shoe as opposed to a speed shoe, but you can do easy runs in this very comfortably. You can pick up the pace in it nicely. I've done a couple of speed sessions in this. It's been fine. Wouldn't be a shoe I'd normally pick for speed sessions, but it's got a bit more to it. This is a really nice update from Deodora because I've not really used or enjoyed many of their daily shoes before, but this is a really good option, and I've very much enjoyed testing it. So, looking forward to seeing what the other guys think of this shoe, actually. OK, and for daily shoe faster training, this is a shoe where we're looking at people who want a daily shoe where they're predominantly training faster all the time, so people like Nick, who's probably not really doing the same sort of easy level of running that I am, so most of the time, he's running at a fairly consistent pace, so he's looking for a shoe that skews more towards that faster training. Top pick for me here, which is no surprise if you've seen the video, is the Asics Mega Blast, which I still think is just a phenomenal shoe. It's so much fun to run in. I love using this at everything, track, daily sessions. You can use it for easy runs. It's absolutely fine. I wouldn't use it for easy runs because it's a waste of a very expensive shoe, but you can use it for pretty much everything, but it really comes into its own. Picking up the pace, it's faster than something like the Kipstone Tempo. It is. You can pick up the pace on intervals really quickly within it. It feels like quite a big shoe, but it really doesn't ride like that. It rides like a very lightweight, bouncy shoe, and even though it's a little bit heavier than some of the faster shoes out there, you get it back from the midsole foam, FF Turbo Squared, which is just a great foam, so Mega Blast, for me, is easily my favorite faster training shoe at the moment, and it will be the one that I go for whenever I've got a really hard session and I don't want to go for a compact ratio. This is still the top option. Very interested to see what happens with the Mega Blast in the future. The other options on the list are the Kipstone Tempo. I've spoken about this quite a bit already. It's pretty close to what you get from the Mega Blast. I wouldn't say it's as versatile. I wouldn't say it's as good in every way, basically, but for the price, it's not far off, so it's a really, really solid faster training shoe, which I just find is so smooth to run in, so comfortable. It's not massively bouncy, but it's just smooth and just feels really, really good, and for the price, it's just amazing. And the Evo SL, still putting this in here because it's not even for the value. I think even if this was 150 pounds, it'd probably still go in this category because this Light Strike Pro Foam is really bouncy. It's a very fast shoe to run in. Whenever I put this on and I go out for a run, I feel like I'm ready to go faster. I don't feel like I'm gonna run slowly in this shoe whenever I put it on. So the Evo SL is, yeah, still a great pick in this category, and especially considering the price. So that's it from me. That is my list of favorite shoes 2026, and those are all my individual picks that I like running in at the moment. Looking forward to seeing what the other guys have got in their lists, so if you subscribe and carry on watching the channel, you'll see all of those. Thanks a lot for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and click that little bell, and if you go into the caption below, you can find a link to our podcast, which comes out a couple of times each month. Thanks a lot for watching. Catch you next time. Thank you.