The State of Vegan Trainers 2026

We read the published material data of every trainer colourway stocked at Zalando UK across 8 brands: 4328 colourways of 755 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 16.5% could be confirmed vegan

714 colourways are clean in both sources. Another 841 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. 2770 colourways (64%) 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. ASICS49.2% 315 checked155 confirmed82 likely78 animal
2. Nike28.6% 1012 checked289 confirmed239 likely484 animal
3. New Balance19.9% 790 checked157 confirmed108 likely525 animal
4. Reebok8.4% 239 checked20 confirmed62 likely155 animal
5. Veja6.1% 229 checked14 confirmed14 likely201 animal
6. adidas Originals5.2% 1174 checked61 confirmed199 likely913 animal
7. Vans3.4% 527 checked18 confirmed127 likely382 animal
8. Off-White0% 42 checked0 confirmed10 likely32 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

49.2% 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 66% 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, 62 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 711 confirmed colourways.