On’s Co-Founder Discusses How Spray-On Uppers and a Breakthrough in Supercritical Foams Will Make for a Big 2026

On has laid an early bid as the source of the biggest running shoe innovations of 2026.

At The Running Event last week in San Antonio, the Swiss brand revealed its first mass-market shoe to make use of Lightspray technology and a major breakthrough in manipulating supercritical foams.

Outside of Brooks’ introduction of the Glycerin Flex, which creates an entirely new experience fostering ground feel without sacrificing cushioning, and model from another brand embargoed until March, no other shoe shown at the trade show appears poised to tantalize runners next year as much as what was previewed by On.

On-hand to discuss the year ahead and beyond were On cofounder and executive co-chairman Caspar Coppetti and Scott Maguire, who was named chief innovation officer in April and will add chief operating officer to his duties in January.

Maguire has moved at rapid speed in the first of his two roles, as the Cloudsurfer 3 was ready to show to journalists and buyers just four months after development started. When it releases in fall 2026, the shoe will be the first to put holes into a supercritical foam.

“No one in the world can do this,” Maguire told Footwear News. “All of our suppliers said [it’s] impossible. This has been the breakthrough [that] has allowed us to bring Cloudsurfer 3 forward and give a soft, plush experience that is even better that what other brands can give [with] a slab of super foam.”

The oblong vertical holes slant either slightly toward the heel or forefoot and allow for a smoother transition with each strike of the foot. Or to put it in quantitative terms, introducing On’s signature CloudTech to a superfoam results in roughly 20 percent more displacement and energy return.

While the process that allowed On to put Cloudtech holes in a supercritical foam is proprietary, Maguire could say that one of the keys are the “funky things” done in the autoclave, where a block of foam is subjected to pressure and heat and saturated with gas. These trade secrets allow for the creation of tiny, uniform nitrogen holes throughout each piece of foam that would be nearly identical under a microscope, wherever you looked. Without such uniformity, the CloudTech holes wouldn’t expand as desired along with the rest of the foam.

Before the launch of the Cloudsurfer 3 will come the Lightspray Cloudmonster 3 Hyper, which will bring wider availability to the spray-on upper technology introduced last year on the Cloudboom Strike LS super shoe. By March, when the mass-market Lightspray sneaker goes on sale, On will have several hundred thousand robots churning out the uppers.

Lightspray creates a formfitting upper that’s roughly 50 grams lighter than more traditional materials and quite porous for thermal regulation. It also works in conjunction with a high-performance sock tailored to cushioning and additional thermal regulation in targeted areas.

When asked if Lightspray will become as much of a signature to On as CloudTech, Coppetti said he already believes the former is as big as the latter. The company will market the technology heavily, and it’ll also play a huge part in On’s plans for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, but the most important factor is bringing it to scale on a level other brands haven’t been able to with similar ideas.

“Not everybody will be able to get it, but we’ll have a couple hundred thousand people in Lightspray next year, [which] is very, very fulfilling is going to hopefully create an aesthetic that more and more people will want to tap into,” Coppetti said.

Running remains the priority for both Lightspray and On as a whole, but there are also prototypes making use of the tech that will speak to a wider audience.

A significant proportion of booming running shoe sales comes from non-runners adopting the silhouettes for everyday life, which begs the question of how brands will cope when they eventually move onto something else. Coppetti sees On’s core principle of innovation as protection for whenever the tides shift, even if it doesn’t appear to be soon, adding, “If ever running is no longer, we have enough other ideas to stand up.”

One area On hasn’t explored is basketball, which currently has a big opening by the name of Steph Curry after his departure from Under Armour. Don’t count on On courting the free agent, as Coppetti said now isn’t the right time to enter the sport and that it wouldn’t do so until it feels like it can disrupt and innovate.

“If we’ve not got anything and it’s an inauthentic play just to grow the business, we’re not that interested.”