Among the running shoe leaders, Hoka appears to be one of the November standouts cited by a few Wall Street analysts.
Also doing well, based on search volume, were On Running‘s largest franchise, its Cloud 6, as well as its Cloudrunner and Cloudmonster ahead of their early 2026 updates. And Nike’s run category continues to show signs of acceleration. The Nike brand topped the must-have brand list for teens this past fall, according to a Piper Sandler study.
Jefferies equity analysts track 154 running styles from Adidas, Asics, Columbia, Hoka, Nike, On, Puma, Saucony, Salomon and Under Armour on a monthly basis.
In its latest Running Style Rankings based on search volume, Hoka returned to the leaderboard in ninth spot after dropping out of the Top 10 in October. In Month-over-Month (MoM) Growth Rankings, the Adidas Ultrarun outpaced in November, leading with traffic growth of up 4,683 percent, followed by Under Armour’s Bandit at up 4,155 percent, and Asics Gel-Pulse at up 411 percent. Among the top 10 MoM demand growers, Hoka Rincon at 10,000, Nike Wildhorse at 8,000 and On Cloudvisa at 6,000 exhibited the strongest LTM (Last 12 Months) average monthly search volume, according to a report from analyst Randal Konik.
Among the LTM running style demand trends, Nike Pegasus kept the top spot with an average monthly search volume of 332,000, followed by Nike Vomero at 329,000 and Adidas Terrex at 243,000. Among the top 10 most in demand running styles over the last 12 months, Hoka’s Clifton led MoM growth at up 24 percent, followed by Nike Vomero at up 22 percent and the Hoka Bondi at up 14 percent. According to Jefferies data, Vomero has been closing the gap to Nike leader Pegasus.
Guggenheim Partners analyst Simeon Siegel said Tuesday that based on proprietary checks across the athletic and footwear space over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period, the On and Hoka brands were ” standouts.”
For Hoka, based on Guggenheim’s “sell-out proxy report,” the brand saw a 550 basis point improvement from Nov. 11 through Dec. 12, with its two largest franchises seeing gains. The Clifton 10 was up 650 basis points and the Bondi 9 was up 450 basis points.
“We believe the brand also benefited from a 20 percent site-wide discount at Hoka.com during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday period,” Siegel said.
At On, the Guggenheim analyst estimated a 650 basis point improvement during the period across models it tracked, with the Cloud 6 up 600 basis points. The outgoing Cloudrunner 2 and Cloudmonster 2 franchises — both accounting for more than 5 percent of company sales — tracked up 650 basis points and up 700 basis points, respectively. The Cloudrunner 2 and Cloudmonster 2 are set to receive updates in the first quarter of 2026. Siegel said the Cloudrunner 2 and Cloudmonster 2 had 60 percent and 70 percent, respectively, of their sizes “sold-out across key U.S. retailers as of Dec. 12.” For the Cloud 6, the analyst said that style ended Dec. 12 with 38.5 percent of U.S. sizes sold out.
“We observed only light discounts for On with less than 10 percent of Cloud 6 colorways marked down across the key retailers we track,” Siegel said.
And at Nike Run, Siegel said the category improved by 380 basis points, below both On and Hoka, with strength across its Vomero franchises. The Vomero 18 — which Siegel described as Nike’s biggest response to Hoka — is estimated at up 450 basis points and the Vomero Plus at up 850 basis points, with both offsetting the projected normalization for its road-running Pegasus Premium, which was down 150 basis points. The analyst said all three “are showing signs of scaling, as our data suggests stable sell-out rates despite an increasing amount of colorways carried by key accounts.”
“We estimate that 15 percent to 20 percent of Vomero 18 colorways were marked down during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend across Nike direct-to-consumer and key wholesale accounts we track,” Siegel said, adding that the mark downs include colorways eligible for an extra 30 percent off coupon at Nike.com.
Survey data from Circana notes that running footwear has risen in popularity because the comfort factor works just as well for athletic performance as it does for walking around on a daily basis.
In a recent survey of 1,000 consumers about their running preferences, Hoka and Brooks have been vying for the number one spot, while data points show that Nike and Adidas have shown signs of improvement in their respective turnaround strategies, with innovation fueling strong growth at both brands.
