Six years into one of fashion’s most quietly influential partnerships, Grace Wales Bonner and Adidas Originals have arrived for Spring/Summer 2026 with a collection that feels more assured than ever. The SS26 drop reimagines football and running silhouettes through a lifestyle lens, arriving this week via the Adidas Confirmed app and select retailers. It is the kind of collection that earns its attention not through noise, but through the quality of every decision made in the making of it.
The Shoes That Lead
Footwear is front and centre this season, and the standout is the Karintha Basketry. At $600, it is the priciest pair in the collection, a woven version of Wales Bonner’s original Karintha silhouette, handcrafted in Brazil, with basket-weave leather uppers that draw on traditional weaving techniques from across the Global South. It is the kind of reference that only Wales Bonner pulls off without it feeling forced, craft as cultural memory, worn on your feet.
The Gazelle arrives in both snakeskin and pony hair, in rich brown premium leather, a shift from bright colourways toward something more mature and luxurious.The Adizero Adios rounds out the footwear selection, a performance sneaker reinvented through a fashionable lens, with a mesh upper caged by leather stripes, suede accents, and contrast stitching.Each shoe feels like a complete thought, not an iteration.
The Apparel
Wales Bonner tops the collection with co-branded floral jerseys, retro track jackets in pink and white, and a brown Beckenbauer track pant, pieces that carry the same logic as the footwear: sportswear grammar, rewritten in a quieter, more considered hand.
Why It Still Matters
The relationship between Wales Bonner and Adidas began in 2020, with a collection that highlighted the Samba and helped herald the shoe’s return to popularity and high fashion in the years that followed. That origin story has become fashion mythology by now, but what keeps the partnership relevant is that Wales Bonner has never coasted on it. Each season arrives with a clear point of view, a specific reference, and materials that are worth the price. SS26 is no different. In a landscape of collaborations that exist primarily for the announcement, this one still does the work.
