Stava’s 2025 Year in Sport report is out, highlighting trends in activities logged on the fitness app in the year from 1 September 2024 to 30 August 2025. And it has us asking, is cycling out of fashion?
If you’re looking for cycling stats, you’ll have to hunt deeper than in previous years, with running and walking/hiking increasingly dominating what was once predominantly a cycling app.
The report is also heavily focused on Gen Z users, suggesting that Strava take-up is increasingly centred on this younger user base.
As well as crunching the numbers, Strava surveyed a subset of its users to add more depth to its analysis. One finding was that, after skiing and snowboarding, mountain biking and gravel cycling were perceived as presenting the highest barrier to entry.
Although not broken down by sport, Strava says 7.6 million KOM/QOMs or course records were set in 2025. There were also 14 billion units of kudos given across its 180 million users, a 20 per cent increase from 2024.
That may have been helped by the Kudo All plug-in for Google Chrome, released earlier this year, which automatically gives kudos for all the activities recorded by people you're following, saving you the bother of having to find out what they've done.
Strava says 54 per cent of its users were cross-training – recording activities in two or more sports – with 34 per cent participating in three or more. Multi-sport users were four times as likely to record at least one activity a week for a period of over a year.
Strava’s survey indicates that over 50 per cent of its Gen Z users expect to use Strava more in 2026, versus a majority who expect to use Instagram and TikTok the same amount or less, which suggests Strava’s stated objective of becoming the social network for athletes may be bearing fruit.
It claims the social side of sport is growing, evidenced by an increased number of clubs on the site, with cycling clubs increasing 2.8-fold.
Strava has also noted a decrease in international travel among its users, although Britons and Germans bucked the trend. UK-based Strava users most commonly headed to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to record activities away from home, while US users headed to Maine, Vermont, Wyoming, Nevada or Hawaii.
Needless to say, French Strava users were more likely to stay within the country and head to the Alps, Massif Central or Pyrenees. Interestingly, cycling didn’t feature among the five sports for which Strava users were most likely to travel.
There’s more cycling-specific data for bike brands, with Specialized the most popular for both gravel and mountain bikes, and the second most popular for road bikes, behind Trek. The order was reversed for second place in all three categories.
There’s even more data on how people recorded activities, where the Strava app was most popular, with 74 per cent of the total. Next came Garmin devices, with which Strava had a short-lived tussle back in October, then Apple. Apple was number one for activities recorded on a watch, with Strava adding new features to its Apple app in September.
So is cycling going out of style?
What’s the reason for cycling taking a back seat on Strava? Maybe it’s the increasing difficulty of capturing a KOM/QOM, or even improving your own personal best, that we talked about a few weeks ago. Maybe cyclists are getting tired of dutifully logging their activities.
There’s also the proliferation of smartwatches, making it much easier to record an activity in sports such as running and hiking where you don’t have equipment to bolt a larger device to, as in cycling.
Strava also bought the Runna app in 2025, giving it yet more stats, which it has maybe chosen to highlight. As its name suggests, it’s focused on running, although Strava hints more cycling-related functionality will follow.
As the Financial Times pointed out in October, running is experiencing a boom, particularly with Gen Z – and Strava is their preferred activity-logging platform. And as Strava gears up for a public share offering, following the money in growing its user base must be a priority.
We’re also seeing more professional cyclists trading their cycling shoes for trainers. Tom Dumoulin recently ran a blisteringly fast half-marathon and Mathieu van der Poel has also taken to running, uploading an impressive 10k time of 33 minutes 52 seconds to Strava in November.
Garmin’s 2025 Connect data report also showed a 6 per cent increase in outdoor running and a 16 per cent increase in indoor running this year, even if that pales in comparison to the 67 per cent increase in racket sports (we’re looking at you, pickleball). Meanwhile, cycling didn’t even make Garmin’s chart of sports that had seen increases in activity uploads – could this mean it declined?
But ultimately, it's not clear from Strava's Year in Sport whether fewer cycling activities are being logged – possibly deliberately – or if it's just being swamped by the growth in running and walking.
