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Sometimes scrolling through these “best of” sneakers lists can be a painful exercise. Once you near a peak in the hype cycle, the shoes that dominate the rankings are often the hardest ones to get. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it can set up an inverse relationship between a shoe’s popularity and the amount of people who’ve bought and worn it. And we don’t only want to celebrate the most limited, most exclusive, most elusive sneakers. Hence this list to showcase the Best General Release Sneakers of 2025, so far.
Our goal here is to highlight the shoes that have dominated the year in sneakers in a different way. No collaborations, no hypestrikes, and not too many games around artificial scarcity—these are the shoes you’ve seen everywhere, the sneakers that are just as salient in the streets as they are relevant on StockX.
Release Date: 04/19/2025
Price: $110
If you’re tired of the Adidas AE 1, we get it. The hype train for Anthony Edwards’ first signature model has been chugging along steadily for almost two years. Edwards just exited the NBA post-season, so it feels like now is a good time to close this first chapter in his signature footwear story. More than reflecting too much on the AE 1, we’d rather just look forward to the AE 2. But until then, it feels like people are still celebrating Edwards’ first, even if it feels like a lot of them are celebrating because of the extent to which online sneaker communities formed a consensus about the model being 2024’s sneaker of the year. Among the more exciting colorways still lingering around is the “3SSB” one, tied to Adidas’ 3 Stripes Select Basketball youth hoops league, which has faint tie dye tones that have the AE 1 looking flashier than usual. —Brendan Dunne
Release Date: 2025
Price: $160
The ASICS train isn’t stopping anytime soon. You still see the 1130s everywhere. Kayano 14s and 2160s, too. Next up is the Gel Nimbus 10.1. We’ve seen collaborations on it from Stefon Diggs, Vandy, and an upcoming one with Kith. But there are also general release pairs hitting the market. It’s in the same vein as the other popular ASICS, but it looks a little more techy. It’s the Nimbus 10, but with the Kayano 14 tooling. And the colorways are a bit more daring, too. I’m sure you’ll see these flood the streets soon. —Matt Welty
Release Date: 2025
Price: $100
I hate this shoe. From the bottom of my heart. And I wish it didn’t make this list. But here it is. It’s become a thing this year. And last year. The fashion girlies brought back one of the worst shoes of the 2000s, and it’s like reliving a nightmare. The whole low-profile shoe trend is a thing right now, and so is F1 (go watch NASCAR), so it makes sense that this shoe is having a moment. My parents used to laugh when things like bellbottom jeans were coming back into style when I was growing up—I get it now. Couldn’t pay me to wear these. But you see them on the streets and you can buy them anywhere. So it checks a lot of boxes. —Matt Welty
Release Date: 05/2025
Price: $115
It’s about damn time. It feels like an A’ja Wilson signature shoe is about two or three years too late, but better late than never I suppose. It also helps when the sneaker is quite good, which the A’One absolutely is. Wilson’s debut signature shoe was first revealed at NBA All-Star Weekend in San Francisco earlier this year and made its first official on-court appearance on the feet of Bam Adebayo just a few days before. We’ve seen a number of different A’One colorways already this WNBA season and the possibilities are certainly intriguing. That first introductory colorway sold out almost immediately on Nike SNKRS and also had some serious momentum with its IRL releases as well. It will be interesting to see if the momentum continues or if it was more driven by the hype of that first drop. —Ben Felderstein
Release Date: 03/01/2025
Price: $110
The soccer shoe revival is in full swing. It may have started with the Adidas Samba. And turned to Nike’s failed attempt at making the Field General a thing. But it found something with the Total 90. It might be surprising to some stateside who aren’t necessarily tuned in to trends in soccer shoes, buthe Total 90 had a cult following in the 2000s. —Matt Welty
Release Date: 03/01/2025
Price: $200
The release of the “Flu Game” 12 was easily one of the most encouraging sneaker moments of 2025 so far. It’s a shoe that comes with about as much lore as any other Jordan out there, but it’s also one of those shoes that could have easily been a bit of a dud on the latest retro. But that wasn’t even close to the case. Dropping during NBA All-Star Weekend in San Francisco, the “Flu Games” really got people outside. As I’m sure each and every one of our readers saw, myself and Brendan Dunne hit the streets of SF to do some AJ 12 trivia and give away a pair of Flu Games to one lucky customer in a line that wrapped all the way around the downtown Foot Locker and around the block. It was one of those releases that truly restored the feeling and had you thinking that sneakers just might be back. —Ben Felderstein
Release Date: 03/28/2025
Price: $190
“What the” colorways, by definition, are supposed to look wild. To the uninitiated, their mismatched aesthetic shouldn’t make much sense. It’s a formula that Nike SB introduced in 2007 by mashing up panels from multiple Dunks into a single pair of sneakers, and was adopted by Nike Basketball in the years since—to varying degrees of success. What makes the Kobe 8 edition of the experiment so successful is that it actually looks cohesive, despite still being mismatched and incorporating what is said to be nearly 30 different colorways. The abstract blotches, scales, and gradients all work together to blur the lines of specific shoes, instead looking like something all its own. Retro Kobes continue to be a hit, both on and off the court, and there were a few options we considered, but the “What the Kobe” felt like the strongest. Its return offered a more obtainable opportunity for a shoe that had been sought after for over a decade. —Zac Dubasik
Release Date: 01/30/2025
Price: $210
Much has been made of Nike’s overreliance on retro in this first part of this decade. Those retros—Dunks, Jordan 1s, and Air Force 1s—served the brand well for a few years, contributing to rising sales, rising stock prices, and momentum on the resale market. Until they didn’t. Nike overdid it. Dunks were rinsed. Nike CEO John Donahoe got sacked—of course, not just because he was too eager to pimp out the Pandas, but you get a sense that was a part of it. What comes next? Much has been made—by its execs, at least—of Nike’s return to innovation, its product pipeline that will finally once again bring something novel to the market, etc. One of its first wins in that turnaround is the Nike Pegasus Premium, a bold new version of its longest-running running shoe line. It’s not a super serious running sneaker, but it’s a fun, bouncy ride with a curving Zoom bag that makes you feel good about wearing new Nikes again. —Brendan Dunne
Release Date: 05/24/2025
Price: $225
It should be hard to get excited for the fifth release of a shoe, but here we are at #2, and there wasn’t even too much of a debate amongst our team. The “White Cement” Air Jordan 4 was instantly special when it came out in 1989 based on looks alone, but was bolstered by memorable ad campaigns and Michael Jordan actually wearing them on court. It’s remained special since each and every time the shoe has returned: in 1999, 2012, 2016, and again in 2025. This version was especially notable for getting some of the nuances in color and texture right, along with the ever-important Nike Air on the heel. It’s also worth noting that, while coming out five times seems like a lot, five times over the course of 36 years isn’t actually that bad—there are shoes that come out far more frequently. What does matter is that it still feels special. Sure, there has been some debate around the leather quality, but details like the overall shape and feel, and its resemblance to the original, were applauded by longtime collectors. —Zac Dubasik
Release Date: 02/08/2025
Price: $210
This is one of those sneakers that we’re happy to see everywhere. The Air Jordan 5 “Metallic” is an all-time classic, a timeless Air Jordan that broke through this spring despite 2025 being jam-packed with Jordan retro heat and despite the Jordan 5 fading just a bit in recent years. It’s also an ancient shoe, one that first released in 1990 and has been back around a few times since. But this isn’t your parents’ “Metallic” Jordan 5. (We can’t believe it either, but the shoe is old enough that its original fans are having kids and grandkids.)
This version introduces tasteful tweaks as part of Jordan Brand’s “reimagined” line of retros. Mostly it’s more flashy, with added 3M accents on the upper’s edges and on the heel, where the standard “NIke Air” embroidery comes in raised reflective letters. Those are the kind of changes that can annoy fickle Jordan fans. Here, they did the opposite, endearing longtime lovers of the shoe to a new version that changes just enough. It leans into the best of the Jordan 5, upping the tongue’s flashiness with even more reflectors. It looks best with the white laces, which let the sneaker pop just a bit more. And among a run of big Jordans—”White Cement” 4s, the “Grape” 5s that are coming—it might just be the best Jordan of the year. But we’ll talk about that later. —Brendan Dunne
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