As per usual, the Internet is unhappy about Complex’s sneaker of the year list. If you follow the annual list put out by Complex you may be asking yourself “yeah, so what, people are angry every year” and that would be true. This year felt different though because it was the year that the list seemed to deviate the most from what the fans are thinking and experiencing. In past years, you may get an oddball or two but this year there were a lot of oddballs.
To recap, the Complex list looked like this:
Four of these were not even on my radar (#4, #6, #7, #10). The top sneaker was super limited and not widely available. So yeah, it’s a weird list.
Sneakers are in an interesting place right now. If you were to ask people in the sneaker game what the general vibe is, you’d probably hear that Jordans are cold, Vans are hot, Adidas is on fire1, and there are a lot of new collaborators working across all of these brands. Assuming that I am not completely detached from reality, I thought back on the 10 individual sneakers (and packs) that made the most noise this year, here’s what I guessed would be the on the Complex top ten sneakers of the year list (in no particular order):
- Air Jordan 1 x Union LA x Fragment (the entire pack, all three)
- Air Jordan 6 x Awake NY (the entire pack, both of them)
- Air Jordan 1 x Virgil Abloh Archives “Alaska”
- Air Jordan 4 x Nigel Sylvester “Brick After Brick”
- Nike Air Force 1 x Victor Victor (pick a color)
- Saucony Grid Jazz 9 x Westside Gunn “Awesome God”
- Asics Gel-Kayano 12.1 x Vandy the Pink (both were pretty good)
- Vans x Satoshi Nakamoto (both of them)
- Vans Old Skool 36 “Souvenir”
- Air Jordan 1 Low x Travis Scott “Tropical Pink” & “Shy Pink”
40% of my projected list was made up of Air Jordan collabs, which was actually reflected in the real Complex list, albeit we didn’t agree on one of them (the V.A.A. Jordan 1).
OK, well if that was what I thought the Complex list would be, which sneakers are on my personal list2?
- Adidas Megaride AG x Willy Chavarria (the pink one)
- Air Jordan 1 x Virgil Abloh Archives “Alaska”
- Air Jordan 4 x Nigel Sylvester “Brick After Brick”
- Vans Premium Old School 36 x Harris Tweed
- Nike Caitlin 1 (pick a color)
- Vans Old Skool 36 x Parra
- Reebok x G-Unit “G6”
- Nike SB Dunk Low Pro “Som Tom”
- New Balance 992 x Joe Freshgoods “Every Now and Then”
- Nike Air Tech Challenge 2 “Back to the Open”
My point here is that my personal list has only a few overlaps with the Complex list but that’s fine. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks when it comes to your list. Everyone is going to have a different perspective on what speaks to them and it’s very unlikely that the majority of people are going to agree on that. You can argue that Complex has an agenda, they got paid off, or they are hypebeasts, but regardless, their list is going to be different from yours. It’s a certainty.
Complex makes a list because lists get a lot of eyeballs. Eyeballs equal revenue. Their list was never supposed to be a definitive list or something that would make everyone happy, in fact, I’d argue that the negative feelings around it are what makes it so compelling. It is supposed to spark debate and discussion. Mission accomplished.
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- That’s right: I couldn’t come up with a single Adidas that I thought would make the Complex list. Again, not because Adidas had a bad year – they didn’t – but because I didn’t think that any Adidas release was particularly noisy or memorable. ↩︎
- We’ve got 2.5 months left in 2026. Don’t hold me to this. ↩︎
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