Two weeks after Andreas Almgren won the New York City Marathon on debut in an unreleased pair, Nike's Apex has become the most talked-about racing shoe of the autumn, but runners will have to wait until January 2027 to buy one. Nike has positioned the Apex at the top of what it calls a race-day system of speed, alongside the Alphafly 4 and the new Swooshfly, and the three shoes are aimed at very different runners. Understanding where each fits is worth doing before the Apex hits shelves.
The Apex is the most radical of the three. It sits on a 40mm stack, the maximum World Athletics allows for road shoes, with the same height at heel and forefoot for zero drop. Four Air Zoom units, arranged in two stacked pairs, sit under the forefoot, which Nike says is the most Air it has ever put into a running shoe. They are wrapped in ZoomX LT foam and topped by a raised carbon Flyplate with an inverse-wave shape designed to drive load into the Air units, while the upper is Flyknit X with a knit collar and no sockliner. Nike claims up to 40 per cent more energy return and a weight more than 10 per cent lower than the Alphafly 3 in a men's size 10, though those comparisons are with the previous Alphafly rather than the current one. Nike has not confirmed a price, with reports suggesting around $350.
Its competitive credentials are already in place. Almgren won in New York in 2:06:01, the third-fastest winning time in the race's history, and Jacob Kiplimo raced in Nike prototypes when he set the half marathon world record of 57:20 in Lisbon in March and when he ran 2:00:28 in London in April. The Apex also featured on the podium at Chicago in October. For elite athletes, the zero-drop geometry and the forefoot-heavy design make sense; for recreational runners, both are significant departures from the 8mm drop of the Alphafly 4 and will demand some adaptation.
The Alphafly 4, at $280, remains the middle option. Its limited release in September sold out within minutes, and it went on wider sale on 29 October. At the other end of the range is the Swooshfly, a $145 shoe designed for runners finishing a marathon in around four and a half hours. It uses a new TPU-based foam called SkyX, steamed to different densities through the heel, plate area and forefoot, with a five-layer carbon plate rather than the eight layers in the Alphafly and Vaporfly. Nike says it returns up to 16 per cent more energy than the Vaporfly 4, and it launches in China in February 2027 before a wider release in the spring.
For most runners the Swooshfly may prove the more significant shoe. At $145 it undercuts every model in the accessible super-shoe category by a wide margin, and its wider midfoot and lower arch suggest Nike has genuinely designed it for slower runners rather than simply trickling down elite technology. The Apex, meanwhile, will be judged in the spring marathons, when far more elites are likely to have it on their feet. Until independent testing is possible, Nike's claims should be treated with the usual caution, but the shape of its range for 2027 is now clear.