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It turns out people still care about sneaker of the year lists. We’ll be honest, sometimes by the time December rolls around, the staff at Complex can feel a little fatigued with all the listmaking. This is especially true for the sneakers team, which started the year-end conversation early thanks to the annual tradition of November’s Sneaker of the Year panel at ComplexCon. Between battling it out on stage there and debating the entries endlessly in the office and on Slack, the whole thing can feel a bit circular. Why spend all this time on something so subjective? Do people really put that much weight into ranking the sneakers of the year? This year, those questions were met with a resounding yes.
There are more people than ever participating in the sneaker of the year conversation. We love that. There are more controversies and heated debates about selections. We love that too, even if the internet theatrics around the picks can feel a bit goofy at times. The big picture here is that more people seem to care more about sneakers than ever, and that’s something everyone in this hobby should be able to appreciate.
How do we balance the opinions of the larger group with our own? It’s always a tough practice. We assume that you’re here reading the Complex list because you care about what Complex has to say. (Shoutout to the handful of you though who are here to screenshot a couple selections, not read the rationales, and flame us on social media. Get your engagement.) We believe in our picks, but we also want to factor in feedback. If the Complex readership lets us know that we’re wrong, we want to adjust accordingly.
So this list looks different from the one we presented at the infamous Sneaker of the Year panel at ComplexCon in Las Vegas. We assume that the people in the crowd at that panel are among the most dedicated in our audience, and we want our taste to be somewhat reflective of the audience’s, so if that room tells us we’re way off on a shoe, it might get bumped down or brought up. Some of the sneakers presented in that room are not on the final list that occurs here. And some that weren’t are, because they hadn’t released at the time of the panel. Does that all make perfect sense? Great. Enough caveats then, let’s do it. These are the best sneakers of 2024.
Release Date: 5/18/24
Price: $135
This is the most meaningful sneaker Futura’s ever been a part of—which is saying a lot when you consider all he’s done in footwear. His artwork features on the U.N.K.L.E. x Nike SB Dunk High from 2004, a colorway that’s widely considered one of the best SB Dunks of all time, but that shoe isn’t a proper Futura collaboration. He covered the Dunk High in currency for the super coveted “FLOM” that same year, but that shoe never had a real release that the public could participate in. His 2003 SB Dunk is a grail for some, but didn’t do much to incorporate Futura’s actual artwork. This 2024 pair, which blends a Futura print into the upper’s panels, feels like a long overdue missing piece in his portfolio, and one that people can actually participate in. It’s got the right amount of nostalgia, looping back around on one of Nike’s earliest collab partners, without feeling like it’s treading too well-worn ground. —Brendan Dunne
Release Date: 11/9/24
Price: $150
Wu-Tang is for the children, always has been. But do the children care about Wu-Tang? We’re still not totally sure. Nike cracked its vault wide open on this release, making the legendary Wu-Tang Clan x Nike Dunk High from 1999, a shoe that was originally produced in a run of around 100 promo-only pairs, available at retail for the first time. The strategy makes sense: while the Dunk is cooling down, remind people just how important the shoe is by letting them get their hands on an all-time banger, complete with the Wu’s logo embroidered on the heel. But this shoe didn’t feel as big as it was supposed to be. When we brought the Wu Dunk up at the ComplexCon sneaker of the year panel, the crowd responded with collective confusion.
Are today’s sneaker consumers too young to appreciate the allure of the killa beez colorway? Do they not know all the words to “Verbal Intercourse”? We had the shoe at the no. 6 spot at ComplexCon; were we so out of touch to rank that high in the first place? No, it’s the children who are wrong. —Brendan Dunne
Release Date: 7/20/24
Price: $150
Every once in a while there’s a sneaker and a story that come together to significantly increase how good a shoe actually is. That’s exactly the case for Nigel Sylvester’s Air Jordan 4 RM. That’s not to say that the shoe itself isn’t good without the storytelling around the young Sylvester biking in his grandmother’s driveway, but the two came together to create something of a perfect storm. On top of that, the rollout was arguably the best of the year. Nigel hosted two Go Ride events on the same day on two separate continents, starting in London and then finishing up in New York City with thousands of cyclists in attendance, including Lil’ Yachty. The Jordan 4 RM is not Nigel’s signature sneaker by any means, but it will be nearly impossible to separate him from the shoe going forward. —Ben Felderstein
Release Date: 5/31/24
Price: $185
There were people who doubted Action Bronson’s sneakers with New Balance. Jokes were made about them at the 2023 Sneaker of the Year panel at ComplexCon. Maybe they were too left-field for many. But Bronson has never really followed trends. The funny thing about being a trailblazer is that you get made fun of at the start and then people envy you later on. The same can be said with his next collaboration with New Balance, this time on the 1906R, the brand’s it shoe this year. This shoe, in the “Rosewater” colorway, was inspired by women’s colorways on sneakers in the ‘90s: Air Max 90s in white, pink, and purple; Air Max 180s in white, blue, and green. That’s why it’s white-based with pops of orange, fuschia, and green. I wore the sneaker a lot this year. To backyard pool parties in New Jersey, while fellow Armenians smoked hooka in the periphery. I wore them on the streets of Jakarta, as motorbikes whizzed by in packs of chaotic traffic and I dined on spicy crabs as a duo played acoustic renditions of Aerosmith. Because I miss you baby, and I don’t want to miss a thing. The same song Tyson Fury sang to his wife after beating Wladimir Klitschko in Germany. Everything I did in the shoe felt like an Action Bronson lyric. There were two other colorways of the shoe and people had a hard time buying all of them. That’s not a great thing, but it’s one of the few shoes that garnered that reaction this year. —Matt Welty
Release Date: 8/9/24
Price: $155-$350
There’s no way we could have made this list without an ASICS sneaker being prominently featured. Just about everywhere you look, there’s someone wearing ASICS, whether it’s a high schooler rocking them with a Nike Tech Fleece, a fashion bro walking down the street of SoHo, or 15 of my co-workers on any given day, there’s been no escaping the brand in 2024. And that’s a very good thing. For our money, the best collection of ASICS sneakers this year came by way of Ronnie Fieg’s KITH x Marvel Studios collection featuring an array of colorways and models inspired by iconic Marvel villains. There’s a “Silver Surfer” Gel-Kayano 14, a “Green Goblin” GT-2160s, “Magneto” Gel-1130s, and a double pack of GT-2160s for Spider-Man and Venom.
You might be thinking that it’s cheating for us to include all of these sneakers as one entry on the list, but the collection as a whole is really what helps it stand out against its other ASICS counterparts. Fieg never misses when it comes to the little details, and this collection is filled with them. Each pair comes with a comic book that varies in rarity—just like his last KITH x ASICS collection—and the sneakers’ boxes are a perfect execution of the three-way collab. Pick your favorite pair from the capsule and pretend that it’s what we’re listing as the no. 6 Sneaker of the Year if you have an issue with it. —Ben Felderstein
Release Date: 4/30/24
Price: $200
There’s a good argument to be made that Travis Scott’s “Elkins” Air Jordan 1 Low was more exciting for its unexpected burst of color, or that his “Medium Olive” Air Jordan 1 Low was more ubiquitous, and thus either being more deserving of making this list. You could even argue that all three deserve to be on—in an era where fewer and fewer releases immediately sell out and actually flip for a profit, Travis Scott’s collaborations rank near the very top in terms of sneakers that truly matter on a mass scale. Instead though, we chose to honor Travis’ first original silhouette, the sneaker once known as the Jumpman Jack, then not the Jumpman Jack, then the Jumpman Jack again, and finally the CJ1 T-Rexx. Naming complexity aside, we place a premium on actual new models, and especially new models that are able to break through and capture the attention of the sneaker buying public. The CJ1-T-Rexx certainly found its DNA in Nike’s own DNA (Department of Nike Archives), but it’s a noteworthy addition to the rapper’s already impressive collaborative resume. —Zac Dubasik
Release Date: 2/17/24
Price: $215
This is a controversial shoe, but it really shouldn’t be. It’s a “Black Cement” Air Jordan 4, or “Bred,“ or whatever. But it’s not in nubuck like the originals from 1989 and every other time that it’s re-released. I’m personally not a fan of these, but I don’t understand the overall hate for them. Would they have been better as the original? Sure. But you can’t always get what you want, and they still were a huge shoe. Earlier in the year, you saw them everywhere. It was an undeniable shoe. Often on these lists, we talk about niche collaborations, things that don’t quite exist outside of the internet and those who talk about shoes on digital platforms. But the Air Jordan 4 is a shoe that you see outside. And the majority of those buying and wearing them don’t quite care that Jordan did them in all leather. Some might not even know the originals were nubuck. Can’t fault them. We’re not all tapped in. Do I want these to be re-released in the future? Probably not. But oddly enough, there will be people who are in their teens now who don’t know anything else who will want to see these Reimagined 4s get retroed in 2030. What a world we live in. —Matt Welty
Release Date: 11/16/24
Price: $190
When a sneaker is truly special, no one needs to explain why. One glance at the Kids of Immigrants x Nike Air Max Sunder is all it takes to know it’s a special shoe. The story of the collaborators and theme of the colorway—those will reveal themselves in due time. Maybe they’ll even make the shoe better, but none of that initially matters when a shoe makes its presence known like this one. Notably, it hit on one of the most impactful elements that any collab can achieve—it became its own shoe. Kids of Immigrants’ completely transformed the Air Max Sunder, utilizing design cues from Nike’s archival Air Max 120 and essentially creating a new model in the process that can stand alongside the original. Add to that a rollout that began at Complex’s Family Style food festival, followed by a limited ComplexCon drop. But it all comes back to the product, and Kids of Immigrants delivered a product good enough that it was going to win on the strength of the sneaker alone. —Zac Dubasik
Release Date: 11/23/24
Price: $220
I could write a million words about this shoe. The “Black Cement” Jordan 3 is likely the greatest Air Jordan of all time. It’s the sneaker that saved Michael Jordan from leaving for Adidas after the failure of the Air Jordan 2. It was retroed in 1994, 2001, 2008, 2011, and 2018. Some of those retros were good, some not so much. Here we are in 2024 and the process of recreating a shoe from the past has become much more of a science. The “Black Cement” 3 from this year is as close to the original as feels possible right now. The shape, the elephant print, the leather. It’s all more subtle than the exaggerated pair from 2018. Even if they had Nike Air on the heel tab. The 2024 pair wasn’t without its issues, either. There were problems of mismatching elephant print. But it wasn’t as prevalent as on the “White Cement” pair from last year. It’s the best retro of one of the best retros of all time. What more could you want? —Matt Welty
Release Date: 2/16/24
Price: $120
Would you believe it if we told you an Adidas shoe took home the sneaker of the year distinction despite these lists typically being dominated by Nikes? Would you believe it if we told you that Adidas shoe was not a Yeezy or some hyped out retro but actually a brand new design? And a signature basketball shoe at that? What if the associated player wasn’t even in a major market? Believe that.
The Adidas AE 1 has been at the frontrunner of the sneaker of the year conversation for most of 2024. It’s not the most salient sneaker, it’s not the biggest sneaker by volume, and it’s not a shoe people are clamoring for on the resale market. Those attributes were key for shoes securing this level of accolade in the past, so how did Anthony Edwards’ signature get here without any of them?
It did so by giving us something new in a market saturated by retro for the first part of this decade. After Nike kept us stuck in the past with overdone Dunks and Jordan 1s, Adidas reminded us what the future could look like. It did it with smart marketing—any given shoe’s actual design is the foundation, but marketing (direct or otherwise) has always played a part in turning the ones we love into classics. Adidas made the AE 1 a conversation piece by letting Edwards be brash about it in a series of smart ads. It got here without playing any kind of hype games; if you wanted a pair, you could just walk into Foot Locker and buy the shoe.
It’s tough to say how impactful the AE 1 will look a few years from now, but right now, it’s the kind of sneaker the industry needs. Adidas needs it in order to remind the world what the brand can be without Ye. Sneaker collectors need it so that they might stop always turning to retros and allow themselves to step into the 2020s. The NBA might even need it in order to drum up more interest for its young superstars, who will have to carry the torch once LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Steph Curry step away from the league. Will the Adidas AE 1 and Edwards deliver on all of those? We don’t want to call it too early, but sometimes you gotta believe. —Brendan Dunne
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