Every year, gravel moves on – the races develop, the bikes change and the tech improves.
2025 has seen gravel-bike design move towards sporting ever-wider tyres, while specialisms have developed as brands scramble for a foothold in cycling's fastest-growing segment.
But what’s next? Well, since you ask…
Warren Rossiter: the gap between gravel race bikes and other gravel bikes will widen
Gravel race bikes are becoming more stripped-down, but other gravel bikes are getting more of everything.
The trend in gravel race bikes is centring on all-rounders, lightweight, stripped-down features and aero integration. These bikes are like a hybrid between road race bikes and old-school cyclocross bikes (let's face it, plenty of new gravel racers are cyclocross bikes).
At the same time, we’re seeing all-rounder gravel bikes adopting more tech, either coming with suspension forks or at least with geometry corrected for a squishy fork. This is not ‘just’ short-travel gravel forks either, we’re seeing lots that are ready for 100mm travel.
There’s also been the advent of soft-tail designs, with bikes such as Lee Cougan’s verbosely named Innova Super Gravel taking the mantle from Cannondale’s groundbreaking Topstone. We’ve now got proper pivots with Trek’s new Checkout, and we will see plenty more follow suit.
That just leaves the adventure/expedition side of gravel, where we’ll see the biggest growth in traditional materials – new bikes built tough from steel, aluminium and titanium. Cinelli’s 2026 HoBootleg Geo sets an intriguing template, as does Moots’ burly new Scrambler. Old favourites Mason and Kinesis will continue to innovate in metal.
Gravel is evolving, with lots of sub-categories mooted, but hopefully not too many – I fear endless mountain-bike style confusion. I’m good with three segments, as I’m sure product managers from all the major players would be, too.
- Read more: Best gravel bikes in 2025 – top-rated carbon, aluminium, titanium and steel gravel bikes reviewed
Oscar Huckle: there will continue to be crossover with 55mm+ tyres
Gravel bike tyre clearances have increased dramatically in 2025, and clearances in the region of 57mm seem to be the new standard.
As such, any bike with less than 50mm of clearance is likely to become prematurely dated at the rate things are changing.
One of the many benefits of such wide clearances is you can run 2.1 or 2.2in cross-country mountain bike tyres. It’s something an increasing number of elite gravel racers are doing to get more grip and overall speed on technical terrain, opting for fast-rolling rubber such as Maxxis’ Aspen ST, Schwalbe’s Thunder Burt or Continental’s Dubnital, among others.
But some manufacturers are also releasing 55mm variants of their gravel tyres, for example Schwalbe with its G-One RX Pro and G-One RS Pro tyres, and Continental’s recently launched Terra Adventures (that are designed to bridge the gap between gravel and XC) come in a 55mm too.
This poses an exciting question: should we be opting for 55mm gravel tyres or equivalently sized XC mountain bike rubber?
It’s a question I’d love to find an answer to, but there’s no denying this overlap introduces confusion from a consumer perspective.
I predict, in years to come, one of these categories will emerge victorious, but I don’t think it will be in 2026. With both tyre strands in their gravel-bike infancy, I strongly suspect we’ll see even more 55mm gravel bike tyres launch and the increasing amount of choice will create an even bigger headache.
But, sooner or later, a consensus will be reached – will it be Team Gravel or Team XC?
George Scott: Chinese bike brands will infiltrate gravel
2025 has seen Chinese road bike brands come to the fore, and the gravel sector will be next.
Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen X-Lab become the first Chinese bike brand to be represented in the UCI WorldTour, Winspace continue to expand its line-up and British rider Harry Hudson win the junior men’s road race at the 2025 UCI Road World Championship on a Quick Pro AR:One.
Chinese-made bikes are nothing new; the difference here is that these are Chinese-made bikes produced by Chinese-owned and operated brands.
These brands will continue to enter the market by capturing the attention of consumers with a keen eye on price – and by gaining column inches in the media – and an increasing number of gravel-focused options will follow. Gravel remains the cycling market’s most buoyant category, after all.
Winspace, one of the longest-standing Chinese brands, launched the G3 Gravel in 2025, while X-Lab's website teases the company’s first gravel bike.
Barriers to entry remain – brand trust, dealer networks and after-sales support – but expect to start seeing Chinese gravel bikes on your local group ride, and at the world’s biggest races, in 2026.
Ashley Quinlan: gravel bikes will get worse before they get better
Gravel, gravel, gravel – it’s all getting a bit silly, isn’t it?
I’m not talking about the discipline itself, nor the endless ‘spirit of gravel’ debate, but of the sheer number of sub-categories we’re seeing now. It’s at risk of collapsing under its own weight, as too many bikes for a specific type of riding saturate the market.
By my count, we’ve got aero gravel race bikes, lightweight gravel race bikes, all-road gravel bikes, suspended gravel bikes, gnarly MTB-adjacent gravel bikes, plus bikepacking gravel bikes.
These hyper-focused bikes are great for the few who need them, but there is such a thing as too much choice – where most would likely be best off with a happy halfway-house gravel bike to cover all their riding. These exist too, of course, but they lurk like needles in the haystack.
My colleague, Warren Rossiter, has tested just about every type of gravel bike imaginable, and the subtext conclusion is usually the same – it’ll be good (or excellent) for its specific use case, but such hyper-specialism often comes at the cost of overall capability.
How many of us have the coin to spend on one of every bike type, and get the use from it to justify all that outlay?
Frustratingly, I don’t think this tide will change overnight, and I expect to see more gravel bikes launch with too much focus on specialisms for my taste. However, I remain hopeful that gravel-bike maturity is just around the corner.
Jack Luke: like it or not, 32in gravel bikes are coming
32in wheels have been the tech talking point in MTB in 2025. It was only a matter of time before gravel bikes followed suit, and I’ve heard credible rumours suggesting mainstream options could appear as early as next year.
Proponents of 32in wheels on gravel bikes claim they offer the same benefits as on mountain bikes, namely:
- Better rollover
- More grip
- Improved stability
These advantages will be most keenly appreciated by gravel racers – a more serious discipline than ever, where top athletes will jump at any competitive edge with seemingly few drawbacks.
Naysayers, meanwhile, argue 32in wheels are just another excuse to sell new tech, and that shorter riders could be unfairly disadvantaged.
Unwilling to stick my neck out lest Big Wheel leaves a severed micro-sized head tube in my bed, I’ll remain unhelpfully on the fence.
On the one hand, I’m all for innovation, and it feels unlikely 32in wheels would entirely displace 700c on gravel bikes. Many said the same about 26in mountain bikes, though, which have been almost entirely replaced by 29 and 27.5in wheels.
Still, 700c has a far longer history on drop-bar bikes, and the UCI won’t permit 32in bikes on the road, limiting their appeal to gravel alone – for now.
On the other, even this long leg haver is uneasy about shorter riders being disadvantaged, because 32in wheels would force smaller bikes to make major fit and geometry compromises.
Besides, 700c is fine, and an unnecessary manufacturing arms race isn’t always the best way to drive consumer tech. Regardless of opinion, alongside a growing number of boutique options, the arrival of 32in gravel bikes looks imminent. The first mainstream release will undoubtedly be the biggest gravel tech story of 2026 – and I’ll be watching closely.
