ASICS Says the GEL-Nimbus 29 Lands December 1, and Its Own US Store Is Already Selling It

ASICS announced the twenty-ninth generation of the GEL-Nimbus from Kobe on October 29, built around a new midsole foam the brand calls FF LUXE PLUS and dated for global availability on December 1. The US store did not wait for it. Men’s and women’s product pages are live on asics.com now, carrying full size runs and product markup that reads in stock, five weeks ahead of the date in the brand’s own release. Both of those come from ASICS. They cannot both be describing the same launch.

The Nimbus is the shoe ASICS points a runner toward when the brief is distance and comfort rather than speed, and it has held that job long enough to become the brand’s most recognizable running model outside the Kayano. Twenty-nine generations is an unusual run for a performance shoe, and it has left the Nimbus in an odd position inside ASICS’s own range. The newer cushioning models the brand has launched over the past two years all sit above it. The Nimbus Mirai 2 borrows the name and is built around recyclability, the GEL-SLOWCUSH was designed for easy days, and both ask more money than the shoe they are branched from. The 29 is the volume product underneath all of it, which is why an update to it matters more than the specialist launches that get the louder announcements. A change to the Nimbus reaches more feet in a quarter than the rest of the cushioning range does in a year.

FF LUXE PLUS is the headline, and ASICS describes it as plusher than the FF LUXE foam it replaces while returning more energy. The sole underneath it has been reshaped, with a wave profile cut into the bottom that the brand says allows extra compression, and the sidewall of the midsole carries that scalloping visibly on both colorways in the launch set. PureGEL sits under the heel for landing shock, molded in deep enough that the word is legible on the back of each shoe. The upper is a new engineered mesh with a knitted tongue, a ribbed collar and a pull tab at the heel. Underneath, the HYBRID ASICSGRIP outsole covers more of the bottom in rubber than the previous model did, laid out as large forefoot and heel pads joined by an exposed midfoot bridge. ASICS lists the shoe at roughly 279g for men and 238g for women, and the design concept, “Soaring Cloud”, is credited to the shapes of clouds and the line work of classical Japanese painting. The ASICS stripes are drawn as a layered double line rather than the solid block the model has worn for years, and on the black colorway they are rendered in a grey that only separates from the upper at an angle. The sockliner is printed with the model name under each heel, which is the only place the shoe names itself other than the lateral midsole.

The number worth pulling out of the release has nothing to do with foam. ASICS published a carbon footprint for the shoe, 11.4kg of CO2 equivalent per pair, in the launch announcement rather than in a sustainability report filed six months later. Almost no brand does that at the product level, and doing it on a volume trainer rather than on a flagship eco model is the version that actually means something. Set that against the launch date reading two different ways on two ASICS properties and you get a reasonable picture of where the company is: rigorous about what it measures, loose about what it says. The runner buying the shoe this week will not care which page was right. The one who waited until December because the press release told them to might. Running specialty has spent two years asking brands to stop announcing shoes months before they can be sold. This is the opposite failure, and it is the first one worth having.

Retail is $170, and the useful comparison is not to other brands but to ASICS’s own shelf. The Nimbus Mirai 2 launched at $180, the Sonicblast 2 at $190 and the GEL-SLOWCUSH at $200, so the shoe with the most engineering in this update is the cheapest of the four. That is the correct order for a model that has to move in volume through running specialty, and it is a reminder that ASICS has been testing higher prices on newer names while leaving the Nimbus where its buyers expect to find it.

The ASICS GEL-Nimbus 29 is 1011C302 in the men’s size run and 1012C060 in the women’s, with black, grey and pink among the launch colorways, at $170. ASICS gives December 1 as the global availability date, and the US pages are already live, so the two are worth checking against each other before waiting. It is listed at asics.com, with running specialty retailers including Fleet Feet expected to carry it.

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The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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