The Top 18 Shoe Trends of 2025

Shoe companies relabel existing product line to match trending sports

Pickleball shoes on Amazon cost an average of 60% more than tennis shoes even though they’re the same. The only difference is in the name.

Riding trend waves is often less about coming up with new products and more about staying on top of new ways consumers are describing old products. And in leaning into the trends, businesses can effectively price discriminate. There’s also typically less competition with newer terms compared to old ones.

Today’s pickleball shoes are yesterday’s tennis shoes. An RGB ring light in 2018 became a TikTok light in 2020. And zero carb bread suddenly became keto bread when the fad diet took off, and ultimately hit its peak in 2019.

We featured the pickleball trend 5 years ago when it was 1/8th of its current popularity and today, there exists a growing category of ancillary products, from pickleball shoes to quiet pickleball balls.

Style on the rise: loafers

Consumers increasingly seek out pro-level running shoe technology as social fitness apps make recreational running more competitive than ever

Thanks to social fitness apps like Strava, competitive running is no longer confined to clubs and official events. And in an attempt to one-up local rivals, some athletes are turning to cutting-edge sneakers for marginal gains.

Carbon-plated running shoes have a lightweight carbon layer embedded in the midsole, providing a spring-like effect when a runner’s foot strikes the ground.

The most notable example is Nike’s Vaporfly 4, which was developed specifically for Eliud Kipchoge’s attempt at the marathon world record. Wearing these shoes, he smashed the notorious two-hour mark, leading some to describe the shoes as “legal performance enhancement.”

The following year, 63% of podium finishers at major marathon events wore Vaporflys. Other brands quickly took note and started producing their own super-spring running shoes.

Many amateur athletes are taking up long-distance running. According to Strava’s own data, the number of users completing a marathon nearly doubled from 2021 to 2022 (while their user base grew 25%), and it continues to grow rapidly.

At the same time, smartwatches and wearable fitness trackers are encouraging more people to get active. Around 1.9 million athletes in the U.S. completed a half marathon last year, and the use of running tracker apps jumped by 27% to 84 million users.

Style on the rise: clogs

Golf shoes get more traction as rainfall increases over the decades

Rainfall across the US has grown considerably since the 1900s and the current decade is the wettest, according to NOAA data.

And when a golf course is even slightly wet, it’s far easier to slip during the downswing. Many golfers, as a result, have turned to spiked golf shoes. Maintaining weather conditions outside and across such a large scale is not realistic, so, as expected rainfalls grow, spiked golf shoes may become even more relevant to the future of golf.

Golf is seeing a boom among a younger, less experienced demographic, and spiked shoes help compensate for poor balance when swinging, lowering the barrier to entry in the traditionally less-accessible sport.

Style on the rise: barefoot

Instead of buying new shoes, many consumers are increasingly tossing their shoes into the washing machine

Until recently, consumers almost never washed their rugs. But searches for “washable rugs” have grown nearly 400% over the past 5 years and brands like Ruggable, a ~500 person company, have made hundreds of millions of dollars.

Similarly, shoes were not commonly washed until recently. As formal attire declines in popularity and athleisure continues its rise, some consumers are wearing single pairs of shoes more back-to-back than they used to. Instead of one pair for the gym, another for work, then a normal pair for going out, some are combining all three into one. This means the pair of shoes see far more uses in a given year and so the shoes wear out faster.

Many consumers react to this early wear by trying to clean their shoes instead of buying new ones after what seems like too soon. So now, some consumers are washing their shoes in their washing machines.

Whirlpool, one of the largest washing machine brands, posted a guide in 2020 about how to clean shoes in their machines. But interest is also growing for smaller, washing machines purpose-built for shoes. And while some of these devices have started popping up on Amazon, the category is still very new and early.