The State of Vegan Trainers 2026

We read the published material data of every trainer colourway stocked at Zalando UK across 8 brands: 3073 colourways of 598 models, each checked twice, once against the EU material label and once against the retailer’s own product description. This is what the labels actually say.

only 18.2% could be confirmed vegan

560 colourways are clean in both sources. Another 566 look clean on the label but publish no description to cross-check, so they are listed as likely, never confirmed, because a minority material such as a suede overlay can hide from a clean label. 1945 colourways (63%) list leather, suede or another animal material outright.

Searching the word “vegan” finds almost none of this either way. Vegan colourways of ordinary trainers are almost never labelled vegan: they are simply the ones that happen to be made of textile, sitting under the same model name as the leather ones.

the league table

1. ASICS49.4% 247 checked122 confirmed64 likely61 animal
2. Nike33.3% 760 checked253 confirmed161 likely346 animal
3. New Balance19.4% 535 checked104 confirmed63 likely368 animal
4. Reebok11.8% 161 checked19 confirmed53 likely87 animal
5. adidas Originals5.2% 880 checked46 confirmed135 likely699 animal
6. Vans4.3% 280 checked12 confirmed77 likely191 animal
7. Veja2.1% 191 checked4 confirmed10 likely177 animal
8. Off-White0% 19 checked0 confirmed3 likely16 animal

Confirmed means clean in both the material label and the description. Percentages describe colourways stocked at Zalando UK, not a brand’s global catalogue. Tap a brand to see every model we checked.

the veja surprise

Veja’s name is practically shorthand for the ethical trainer, and the brand does make genuinely vegan models. But the name is doing work it cannot support.

That is the highest animal-material share of any brand in this index. The lesson is not that Veja is bad: it is that a brand’s reputation answers nothing. The verdict lives at the colourway.

the quiet winner is asics

49.4% of ASICS colourways checked out clean in both sources, the best rate in the index. The pattern behind it is function, not ethics: performance running lines are built from engineered mesh and synthetics, so the vegan rate follows the sport. New Balance shows the opposite pull, where suede is part of the house style, and it lands at 69% animal-material.

the trick the label is allowed to play

EU footwear labelling only has to describe the materials making up roughly 80% of each surface. A smaller component can legally be left off the label entirely, which means a shoe can carry a completely clean label and still have suede trim.

In this index, 35 colourways pass the material label and fail only in the retailer’s own description: “suede sections”, “partly suede leather”. The label is legal. It is just not the whole shoe, and it is why every verdict here reads both sources. The full method, and its limits.

what nobody can verify

Glues and dyes are declared by no brand, at any scale. Material-level animal-free is the honest ceiling of what published data can support, and any stronger claim, by anyone, is a guess. We say so on every page of the index.

the cheapest confirmed-vegan trainers right now

Prices refresh daily, and the index holds the other 557 confirmed colourways.