Trend Report · Winter 26/27
Winter 26/27: aero thermals, boiled wool and the end of black
The autumn collections have landed — MAAP on 1 September, Pas Normal Studios in mid-August, Castelli's deep-winter piece back in July. Read them together and four clear shifts emerge, one of which genuinely changes what a winter jersey is.
1. Aero has finally crossed into winter
This is the substantive one. Aerodynamic fabric engineering has lived in summer race kit for a decade, on the reasonable assumption that riders in winter care about warmth and not drag. MAAP's new Pro Aero Thermal Jersey abandons that split: it brings the brand's aero fabric work into a cold-weather garment for the first time, using a dual-fabric construction — channelled-rib Corno Speed 200 across the sleeves, designed to delay airflow separation, with Corno Spinner SC across the body for warmth and a close race fit.
The logic is obvious once someone says it out loud. Winter is when most riders do their structured training, and drag doesn't take a season off. Expect every serious brand to have an aero-thermal answer by next autumn. The counter-argument is equally worth stating: on a January endurance ride at 24 km/h, the aerodynamic gain is a rounding error, and you're paying for engineering you won't use. This is a race-day category, not a wardrobe staple.
2. Off-bike is now a real category, and it's gone natural
Pas Normal Studios' Off-Race AW26, launched 13 August, is described by the brand as its most complete off-bike wardrobe yet — and the material list is the story: boiled wool, merino knitwear, Japanese seersucker, a down liner jacket, tech corduroy trousers. Natural fibres providing insulation, layered under and over the technical stuff, with practical storage and reflective details borrowed from cycling kit without shouting about it.
What's notable is the reversal. For years, "cycling lifestyle" meant technical synthetics cut into casual shapes — a jersey pretending to be a shirt. This season it's the opposite: proper clothing materials, constructed with cycling's functional thinking. That's a much harder thing to make and a much easier thing to wear.
3. The palette leaves black behind
Winter kit has defaulted to black for as long as winter kit has existed, for the practical reason that it hides road spray. The new seasonal palettes are quietly abandoning it: Pas Normal Studios' season runs Black and Steel alongside Dark Coffee, Dark Navy, Dusty Earth, Deep Olive, Wood and Sandstone. Earthy, mineral, muted — closer to a menswear autumn palette than to traditional winter cycling.
This is the same movement our 2026 trend report tracked in summer kit, arriving in the cold season: deep solids replacing both loud prints and default black. One practical note before you commit: sandstone and dusty earth look magnificent in a lookbook and show every millimetre of winter grime on a wet Tuesday. Buy the colour for the coffee stop, keep something dark for the mudguard months.
4. Brands now sell systems, not garments
The fourth shift is commercial rather than material. MAAP frames its new collection explicitly as a versatile layering system combining aerodynamic efficiency, thermoregulation and weather protection. Pas Normal Studios describes Off-Race as a flexible layering system. Gobik's summer UNITY work followed the same logic from the other end of the year. Nobody is selling you a jacket any more; they're selling you a layering philosophy with four purchase points.
For coherence, this is good — pieces designed together genuinely work together, and colour palettes that cross-combine mean fewer clashes. For your wallet, be careful. The system framing is designed to make a single purchase feel incomplete. Our layering guide exists precisely because you can build a full winter wardrobe from seven or eight pieces, and they don't have to come from one brand or one season.
What we'd actually buy this winter
Unchanged from last year, because the physics haven't moved: a proper thermal bib tight remains the single biggest comfort upgrade for cold riding, and it's still the piece riders under-spend on while over-spending on jackets. After that, a long-sleeve thermal jersey in a colour you like, and a merino base layer. The aero-thermal jerseys are genuinely interesting technology, but they're for people doing winter intervals, not winter kilometres.
And the honest timing note: the pieces landing now will be discounted in about five months. If you can ride through this winter in what you own, February is when this season's collections become sensible purchases. If you can't, buy the bib tights — those are worth full price.
New winter drops land weekly in the Drop Radar, and current picks per category sit in the Kit Finder.
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