Asics‘ Superblast franchise has grown from an out-of-nowhere hit into one of the most anticipated running shoe updates in 2026.
Word of mouth slowly led to the first Superblast being impossible to find after its introduction in 2022, and consumer appetite was fed with slight updates and greater stock on the Superblast 2 two years later. Anticipation is once again high for the Superblast 3, and Asics‘ latest round of upgrades is going well beyond slight.
The Asics Superblast 3, which has been announced for a March launch, switches from the FlyteFoam Turbo Plus midsole of its predecessor to FF Leap, the most advanced foam in Asics’ fleet that comes over from its Metaspeed Sky/Edge Tokyo and Metaspeed Ray super shoes.
The ATPU forms the majority of the new midsole and sits atop a small bed of firmer FF Blast Plus foam for security and durability. Because of the change in materials and new geometry, Asics found a 15.4 percent increase in energy return compared to the Superblast 2. The Superblast 3’s stack height comes in 1.5mm higher at 38.5mm, but the shoe still manages to shed 10 grams of weight at 239 grams for a men’s size 9. This comes after the Superblast 2 actually added weight compared to its predecessor.
“As we’ve scaled and [the Superblast] has become a bigger part of our arsenal of footwear, we wanted to take a thoughtful, methodical approach to this big update,” Paul Lang, Asics global senior product manager, told Footwear News. “Knowing we just had some really big steps forward last spring in the foam on our racing product, we wanted to take that foam and bring that into an everyday trainer.”
An additional alteration underfoot comes via the diamond-shaped forefoot bounce pod, which has been made more pronounced and aggressive to create a piston effect for propulsion. It features in some of Asics’ other Blast shoes as well, including the Megablast and Sonicblast that launched last year, but was used more conservatively on the Superblast 2.
Moving up, the engineered weave upper has been revised for a sleeker fit. Its lacing system moves away from traditional hole punches for all but its two upper eyestays, with the rest replaced by cord loops that allow for a more personalized fit.
For the launch colorway, a vivid graphic may initially bring to mind heat maps with its application of blue, green, yellow and red — but the choice was actually made to invoke a temporal fold, a theoretical concept of bending spacetime to move faster than the speed of light. A graphic on the heel that will be used throughout other iterations symbolizes the journey from when a shoe is first taken out of the box until the runner crosses a finish line.
“This is essentially the shoe that created the unplated super trainer,” Lang said. “We’ve seen the industry follow in spades ever since. With the expansion of the model and wider points of distribution, we’ve moved past that runner that’s finding us through digital methods, and now there’s a consumer going into their local run shop and finding out what this experience can be like underfoot. So our net continues to be cast wider and wider.”
The Asics Superblast 3 will release on March 1 through Asics’ website and select third-party retailers. Pricing is set at $200.
Asics Superblast 3 (pair)
Asics Superblast 3 (lateral)
Asics Superblast 3 (medial)
Asics Superblast 3 (above)
Asics Superblast 3 (heel)
Asics Superblast 3 (outsole)
