PUMA and J.L-A.L are back on the Cell Geo, and this time the shoe is wearing a cage. The second collection from the London design studio arrives September 12 through PUMA.com, PUMA flagship stores and selected stockists, built around a full TPU shell laid over a breathable mesh upper. PUMA has not announced a price for it, and the release date is the only hard number in the announcement. The first J.L-A.L Cell Geo still lists at $190, which is the figure worth holding onto until a real one turns up.
Cell is one of PUMA’s oldest running arguments. The brand’s own product copy dates the technology to 1998 and credits the hexagonal cell shape with giving cushioning a stable structure, and PUMA has been reissuing shoes built on it ever since. Cell Geo takes that idea out of the midsole and spreads it across the whole shoe, turning a cushioning geometry into a visual language. It is also a silhouette PUMA has kept handing to outsiders rather than pushing as a house franchise. The general release Cell Geo 1 currently lists at $150 on PUMA.com in six colorways, with a Cell Geo Biology at $160 alongside it, and both collaborative chapters so far have come from the same studio. The first arrived in March, and the silhouette has also turned up in Paris on Dorian Malonga.
The new version is where the Buckminster Fuller reference comes in, and PUMA leans on it hard. A full TPU cage covers the mesh upper in what the brand calls an interpretive discoid web, drawn from geodesic domes, and it sits over a laceless silhouette with a functional cloven heel. In the press images the cage reads as a dense field of stretched hexagons and ovals that tighten around the toe and open out across the midfoot, and it is clearly doing structural work rather than decoration. Two colorways are shown, an off white and a dark brown, both with the cage in a matching tone so the texture carries the shoe instead of a contrast color. The brown pair gets a ridged outsole that echoes the cage geometry underfoot. J.L-A.L branding stays small, on the tongue and the heel. The apparel that comes with it is monochrome black, which leaves the footwear as the only place the collection lets its geometry show.
PUMA’s position here is worth reading carefully. The brand’s own site puts Speedcat and Suede at the top of its shoe navigation, which is where the volume lives, and it has been using collaborators to carry the stranger silhouettes. Madhappy got the Suede and the H-Street last week, which is the safe end of that approach. Cell Geo is the opposite end, a shoe with no nostalgia to lean on and a shape most people would not pull off a wall unaided. Handing it back to J.L-A.L a second time, rather than absorbing the design language into a general release, says PUMA reads it as an editorial project rather than a franchise. That is a defensible call. It also means the Cell Geo keeps looking like this only as long as an outside studio stays interested.
Price is the open question. PUMA has not published one, and the press release stops at the release date and the stockists. The first J.L-A.L Cell Geo, the Umbre in Cocoa Bean and PUMA Black, carries style 408755 and lists at $190 on PUMA.com today, $40 over the general release Cell Geo 1. If the second chapter holds that line it lands at $190 again. A full TPU cage is more tooling than a printed gradient, so $200 would not be a surprise either. What can be said with confidence is that this is not a $150 shoe, because PUMA has never priced a J.L-A.L Cell Geo at the general release number. Anyone quoting a figure before PUMA does is guessing.
The PUMA x J.L-A.L collection releases September 12, 2026, at PUMA.com, PUMA flagship stores and selected PUMA stockists. PUMA has not announced a retail price or a style code for the new Cell Geo, and neither appears on the brand’s product pages yet. The collection also carries a mesh collared jacket, matching pants, a long sleeve, a knitted pullover, a bucket bag built on the Cell Geo’s warped construction, and a ribbed skull beanie.
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