Adidas has confirmed that a White-Black colourway of its 97-gram Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 will receive a wider release on 25 May, two weeks after Sebastian Sawe broke two hours for the marathon at the TCS London Marathon and four weeks after the very first batch of the shoe sold out within hours of release. The new launch will land at adidas.com, the brand's flagship adidas Runners stores in London, Berlin, Tokyo and Boston, and a hand-picked group of speciality retailers, with retail price holding at the headline-grabbing $500 figure.
The Pro Evo 3 was first introduced on 25 April as the most aggressively engineered carbon-plated road racer Adidas had ever produced, weighing in at 97 grams in a UK 8.5 thanks to a paring back of upper material, a single-density Lightstrike Pro midsole and a redesigned full-length carbon plate. Sawe wore the prototype to a 1:59:30 in London on 26 April, the first sub-two-hour marathon ever recorded inside a record-eligible mass race, with Yomif Kejelcha second in 1:59:41 in the same model. Adidas's stock surged 8.4 per cent the following Monday, the brand's biggest single-day jump of the year.
The original 25 April release was sold via a mix of a confirmed-app raffle and over-the-counter allocations at flagship stores in London, Berlin and Tokyo, but stock evaporated within hours and resale prices on StockX climbed past $1,200 inside a fortnight. The 25 May drop is intended to give the wider club-runner audience a route to a pair without paying a premium, although Adidas has stated it will remain a controlled-distribution model rather than a true general release. The brand says the autumn marathon-window restock — the third confirmed wave — will be larger again and will sit in inventory for the first time at scaled retail.
The technical story behind the 97 grams is in the cushioning. Adidas has used a proprietary supercritical Lightstrike Pro foam variant they are calling Lightstrike Pro Evo, paired with a stripped-back Continental Lighttraxion outsole that prints rubber only where the foot strikes hardest. The carbon plate sits closer to the foot than in any previous Adios racer, and the engineered upper has been reduced to a paper-thin Aeroceptor mesh that the brand admits will only survive a small number of marathon-distance efforts before structural fatigue sets in. Adidas has been transparent that the shoe is built for race-day performance rather than for training durability.
World Athletics has cleared the Pro Evo 3 against the existing 40mm stack-height limit and the technological equivalence rule that has governed road racing footwear since 2020, although the body has signalled that it will revisit the regulations after the Pro Evo became the first shoe to host a sub-two-hour marathon. For now, the 25 May rollout means the next generation of British, Japanese and American club runners chasing a personal best at the autumn marathons in Berlin, Chicago and New York will at least have a shot at lacing up the same model that broke the barrier in London.