adidas has confirmed the Anthony Edwards 3, and it arrives September 18 in a colorway the brand is calling Cold Blooded. That is a Friday, and it puts Edwards’ third signature shoe in stores before the NBA season tips. The date also moved. Reporting over the summer had this one down for September 15, and adidas has now put its own stamp on the 18th. The more telling detail sits further down the listing, and it has nothing to do with the adult pair.
The AE line is only a few years old and it already behaves like an established franchise. The AE 1 showed up looking like nothing else adidas had in the gym, all volume and hard angles and a cage wrapped around the midfoot, and enthusiasts either loved it immediately or spent a season arguing about it. The AE 2 sanded down some of that strangeness without losing the shape, and it now sits on adidas.com in fourteen colorways, which is not a number a brand prints for a shoe it is quietly walking away from. Around the two main models adidas has built out a mule, a run of country and team colorways, and a set of American football cleats carrying Edwards’ name. That last one is the tell. Brands do not extend a basketball signature into another sport for a player they are still testing. adidas basketball has spent a long stretch looking for a name that moves product on high school courts rather than only on resale, and Edwards is the closest it has come in years.
The AE 3 keeps the family silhouette and rebuilds most of what is underneath it. adidas is using a foam it calls Dreamstrike EVA, a high-rebound compound the brand pitches for players who spend a lot of time above the rim. Over that sits what adidas describes as an advanced TPU cage, the structural piece doing the containment work on hard cuts, and it is the loudest visual element on the shoe. In the Cold Blooded makeup that cage reads as a wide slate-blue panel across the midfoot with the Badge of Sport debossed into it, set against a grey knit upper with a visible weave. adidas calls the upper a two-way stretch knit and pairs it with reinforced toe protection, which is the part that usually fails first on a guard’s shoe. The midsole is frosted and faintly translucent, and a run of chevron ridges bridges it to the upper in blue and white. The chevron is the line’s signature design cue and it is more pronounced here than on the AE 2.
The part of this launch that actually says something is the size run. adidas has the AE 3 listed on its own site in three tiers, the adult pair alongside Junior and Children versions already sitting on the shelf page as coming soon, which is not how a brand stages a shoe it is treating as a collector drop. Read that next to the campaign and the strategy is consistent. adidas is pairing the launch with MINNATLANTASOTA, an episodic sketch series with new installments landing monthly through the season, and it has put the shoe on Olivia Miles, VJ Edgecombe, Kaleena Smith and Karim Lopez, a group weighted toward college, the WNBA and international basketball rather than established NBA names. adidas is not selling a spec sheet here. It is selling Edwards as a personality to an audience that is still in school.
The AE 3 comes in at $130, exactly where the AE 2 sits on adidas.com right now, so adidas has held the line rather than following the category upward. For context, Jordan Brand put the Tatum 5 out at $125 earlier this month, which puts the two most aggressively marketed young signature shoes in basketball within five dollars of each other. The kids tiers land lower, at $100 for Junior and $90 for Children, and the AE 1 Low is still listed at $110. A signature basketball shoe holding a three-figure price into its third year is the quiet part of this release, and it is the part that keeps the line in gym bags.
The adidas Anthony Edwards 3 Cold Blooded releases September 18, 2026 at $130 under style code KH8537, in adult sizes at adidas.com and select adidas retail locations worldwide. Junior sizes are listed at $100 and Children at $90, both marked coming soon rather than confirmed for the 18th. If you had the September 15 date from June written down, move it.
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