Kith released the Salomon XT-EVO on August 7, two colorways, across its New York, London, Paris and Tokyo stores alongside the &Kin Fall 2026 launch. Four weeks later Salomon put the same silhouette on its own site in three general-release colorways. That sequence is the thing worth knowing about this shoe, and the original version of this post missed it, because it read the launch the way Kith’s previous Salomon projects have gone.
To understand what the XT-EVO is, start with the shoe underneath it. Salomon introduced the S/LAB XT-6 in 2013 as a technical running shoe developed with trail athletes, and by the brand’s own account it stayed in that lane for five years. The turn came in 2018, when Salomon re-released it through its Sportstyle range and, in the company’s words, a fashion-forward audience found it. Benjamin Grenet, the Salomon designer, has described that as the moment that unlocked a new world of possibilities and freed the design to be taken somewhere else.
Everything Salomon has done in the sneaker conversation since has run off that chassis. The XT-6 has been recoloured, collaborated on and sub-lined for the better part of a decade, and the criticism that comes with that is fair. A brand that broke through on one silhouette has leaned on it hard. The XT-EVO is the answer to that criticism, and Salomon chose to introduce it through a partner rather than in-house.
The construction is a new upper on carried-over tooling, and Kith says as much rather than overselling it. Kith describes an original racing-inspired upper built from liquid rubber and breathable mesh, paired with Salomon’s XT-6 tooling and its Agile Chassis System and Contagrip outsole. The spec sheet on Kith’s own product pages lists a molded TPU cage, mesh underlays, a padded collar, QuickLACE, an OrthoLite footbed and XT-EVO branding on the side heel. Salomon frames the same shoe differently, calling it the next era of XT and an updated version of the racer, so the all-new language belongs to Kith rather than to both parties.
Two corrections to what this post said before. The colorways are not a grey and a black. Kith names them Black / Lemon / Lava Falls under L45568800 and Black Coffee / Excalibur / Bluing under L45568900, the second a brown and olive pair with purple through the lining and sole. The grey XT-EVO described in some coverage is the general-release Alloy / Castlerock / Ftw Silver, a different shoe from a different drop. And the diamond-patterned texture this post attributed to the upper appears in no Kith or Salomon material. Outlets looking at the same panel have called it diamond, a checkered grid and perforated grid sections, which is what happens when everyone is describing a photograph.
The read is what the sequence says about the Kith arrangement. Since December 2022, when the GORE-TEX XT-6 capsule started it, Kith’s Salomon projects have mostly been closed loops. The XT-4K and XT-Voyager at the end of 2024, the XT-Whisper with Kith Women in February 2025, updated versions of the 2024 pair this spring. The XT-Voyager, by all available evidence, never left Kith channels. The XT-EVO did, in twenty-six days, in colorways Salomon controlled. Read generously, Salomon used a partner to introduce a silhouette and then took it back for the line, which is a sensible way to launch a shoe. Read less generously, a first-access window worth twenty-six days is a thinner proposition than a product nobody else gets. Salomon has not commented on the sequencing.
Retail was $200 on both Kith colorways, and $200 again on the Salomon general-release pairs in September, which is the cleanest signal in the whole sequence. The collaboration carried no partner premium at all. This post carried no price before, which is the larger failure. Two figures circulated in coverage and neither holds. A pre-release estimate of roughly $225 was an estimate, and a later report of $250 against a euro price of 190 is contradicted by Salomon’s own storefront. The number is $200. For comparison on the collaboration side, The Broken Arm’s Savat took the opposite route and built a new silhouette from scratch.
Release details
The Kith for Salomon XT-EVO released August 7 at 11am local time through Kith stores in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, plus Kith.com and the Kith app, at $200. The two colorways are Black / Lemon / Lava Falls, L45568800, and Black Coffee / Excalibur / Bluing, L45568900. The general-release XT-EVO followed on September 2 through Salomon’s webstore at the same price, in Black / Black / Asphalt, L45404200, Black / Fiery Red / White, L49177900, and Alloy / Castlerock / Ftw Silver, L45419100.
One claim removed
This post previously said Ronnie Fieg teased the shoe for weeks. Kith’s announcement landed August 5 for an August 7 drop, and the only pre-announcement exposure traced to an unofficial European retail listing of the general-release pair. The teaser campaign that ran earlier in the year was for the XT-4K, a different shoe. No Fieg quote about the XT-EVO exists in any source checked, and Kith’s launch copy is unattributed brand voice.
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