Predictions for the mountain bike world in 2025

It’s that time of year when we look into the mists of time, peer into the future, and see what lies ahead. Maybe. In 2024 we were – as usual – sometimes somewhat right. Actually, we might have been ahead of the game – some of our predictions have not yet come to fruition, but perhaps 2025 will see them come to pass. Here’s what the team are predicting…

Hannah, Managing Editor

Bikes are still great, but sadly I don’t think the bike industry is in a great place, and I don’t see that changing much in the year ahead. From a consumer perspective, I don’t think you’ll see a world of difference, but for riders and people for whom bikes are paying their wages, I think it’s going to be a strange old world. Here are my – less than cheerful – predictions:

Fairly Boring New Things

In product terms, 2024 has been something of a slow year, with brands holding off launching new things while they try and clear out the backlog. I think 2025 will see the foot taken off the new product hosepipe, but many things will feel all a bit 2024. Less of a giant leap forward, more of a ‘here’s something we had in our bottom drawer and need to get through the order pipeline’. The brands that will win will be the ones who were agile enough to skip the 2024 techno-stepping stone and jump straight into 2025 – or perhaps are new kids on the block without all the baggage of the past.

New Market Focus

With the USA likely to introduce all manner of chaos to import rules, and political uncertainty in Europe, bike brands will look to new markets for their growth. World Cup XC rounds in South America, plus Red Bull’s urban racing series, will give brands a chance to bring the hype in new places. Expect more sponsored athletes from these locations, and a bigger focus on customer service to serve these places.

Back To The Nineties

Bike style is going back to the Nineties. Expect more specialist bike wear that looks like normal clothes. Baggy everything. Lots of unisex gear. ‘Drops’ of limited edition gear. Rider-led micro-brands, co-labs and collections. Retro-revisted designs with modern fabric tech on old styles. Briefly, your old wardrobe will be fashionable.

It’s Not Over Yet

Industry turmoil is not over yet. Every time a brand decides to make efficiencies and get out of a product line, goes into administration, or otherwise shifts stock at bargain basement prices, a whole other swathe of consumers gets the new gear they needed. Now they don’t need anything new for another year, or more, making sales even harder for the brands that do remain. Some of them were already struggling, so some of them end up being forced into a fire sale, so yet more consumers get what they need at budget prices… the dominoes will continue. There will always be a few consumers who want the new stuff, but unless it’s a big step forward the new stuff is going to have a tougher and tougher time competing against the sales prices.

Benji, Tech Editor

Oof. The model year er, model of mountain biking may well be currently ‘resting’ but that doesn’t mean that the Average Joe/Josephine is in for a poor year of riding. Because riding bikes is still riding bikes. And I’d advise anyone working within the bike industry itself to do just that: ride bikes.

Enduro-a-go-gone

Both as a race format and a genre of mountain bike, I think enduro is pretty much going to go the way of 4X. The wrong–headed decision to make World Cup level enduro racing into a Low Calorie version of Downhill was never going to work. And there are two practical reasons why folk aren’t interested in enduro anymore: the race coverage was hopeless, and… e-bikes. Most punters interested in longer travel mountain bikes have gone electric. Or are about to.

Battery is everything, not motor

Speaking of ebikes, my theory for 2025 is that the audience for eMTBs is a lot more clued up than they used to be. E-people know that the weight of eMTBs is predominantly the battery. So my grand prediction for eMTBs in 2025 (probably MY2026 eMTBs) is a move toward battery flexibility. The era of having to lug 800Wh batteries around on every single ride you do (even if it’s only a 60 minute blast) is possibly about to end.

Make or break World Cup DH season

We’ve mooted the death of Downhill racing before and been incorrect. The saviours have been the racers themselves. Recent racing has been arguably the best ever in the sport’s entire history. The UCI and World Series organisers do however seem hellbent on making DH go F1. Bigger but fewer teams. More expensive to compete but no real increase in prize money. It’ll be interesting to see what the racers think when it comes to signing up for 2026.

Flex is the new geometry

Even though it isn’t true, there’s a general consensus that MTB geometry is ‘done’ now. Completed it mate. Due to this, the MTB Marketing Illuminati will decide that they need something else to bang on about to shift units, particularly acoustic MTB units. The New Thing is going to be flex. Very specific flex in very specific places.

AI-dverts

Oh, and there’s going to be loads of AI generated imagery and videos in marketing material. Most will go unnoticed but there’ll be some great hilarious howlers on the way.

Chipps, Editor at Large

For next year, I reckon that there are big moves ahead for the bike industry. However, I don’t think it’s going to greatly effect us everyday riders – it’s the kind of Jetstream business that goes on above everyone’s heads and that we never see on the trails. Those company mergers, multi-million pound TV contracts or sponsorships and top-flight prototype gears aren’t think kind of things that affect the Thursday night ride, or the Saturday bike shop visit. I think it’s going to be a Jetstream kind of year in 2025. Some big announcements in the pipeline, but you’re unlikely to see the impact in your daily riding life. Let’s see…

Big One Goes Pop

I’m sure everyone else is saying that times are tough out there for the bike industry at the moment, but there are signs that a few more people are buying bikes and components again (or at least, they’ve worn out the ones they bought during lockdown…) – however, I think there’s still room for one, final, big household name to go pop before we get out of the woods. I have no idea who it would be, but I reckon that a household MTB name won’t be around in a year.

Trails Get Quieter

No one likes getting lost in the woods, and even with today’s GPS gadgets to show us the way, I predict that countryside bridleways will get noticeably quieter this year. With nearly 30 years gone by since the opening of the first purpose-built bike park in the UK, a generation of MTB riders have become so used to ‘resort’ riding that the ‘what’s over that hill?’ big day out of exploring has been replaced by the known quantity of the bike park or the local woods. And, in addition, anyone who got into mountain bikes as a middle-ager in the nineties is now retired… The map-crossing torch has passed to the gravel riders, who ride a different set of trails, and XC riders generally train on the road to race at the weekends. However, if you’re one of the minority, get out and enjoy those quiet (and slightly overgrown) trails!

Aero Everywhere But On The Trails

Many bike and component companies have a lot riding on gravel in 2025, yet their enthusiasm for the racier end of the sport threatens to alienate the customers that they’re relying on to actually buy the stuff. Given that many purchasers of gravel bikes are after ‘big sky’ map-chasing adventure, bikepacking trips, or just as a defence from potholes, the focus on tall-gear, aero bikes and components are turning those riders off. Expect to see the bikes bought in shops to reflect more of the riding done by non-sponsored gravel riders and feature bigger tyres, lower gears, all the bosses and not a jot of aero accommodation.

Premier League Racing

With the ‘shake up’ of UCI World Cup racing last year, with bigger (ie more expensive) rosters now being required of the teams in events like downhill, we’re going to see a widening gulf between deep-pocketed teams who can afford to ship and support those big race teams around the world, compared to the previous small trade teams with a few up and comers… By the end of 2025, we’re going to see more of a gulf between the premium teams and the rest of the ‘scene’. With the price of entry to the big league rising and shorter course, multi-cam coverage getting more Formula1, how long until we see the influx of petro-states and luxury airline sponsors as the only ones who can afford to back a bike race team?

Techno Showdown? Or just one louder?

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. I think that 2025 is going to see the reveal of some new technologies intended to dazzle us. Although, it’s going to have to go some to actually impress: We already have wireless shifting from SRAM and a couple of companies (and do hurry up, Shimano…) as well as clever electric shocks from RockShox and Fox and wireless droppers too, but there’ll be more. What’s it going to be? GPS-enabled suspension tuning? Some sci-fi brain impulse gear shifting? Or just 13 derailleur gears at the back? One louder…

Actually, that’s probably going to be it, seeing as everything else I can think of has already bean done… Or has it?

Mark, Publisher

My prediction is that most of what happens in 2025 will be hard to predict. Recent history has shown that the cycling industry is not that resilient when things change and its response to market shocks tend to be mostly driven by panic. It won’t take much to knock the stuffing out of brands, big and small and so far 2025 looks like there may be a lot of global happenings that may very well do just that.

Now I’ve nicely lined up the excuses for my poor predictions, I’ll begin.

Better than 2024

I think the bike industry will actually have a better year, relatively speaking. 2024 was frankly diabolical and we lost a lot of common names to collapses. I don’t think there will be quite as many in 2025 but I think there are lots of brands balanced on the brink and not all will make it to the back side of the year where I think the market will begin to recover. 

Don’t be big

Ironically I think a lot of smaller brands have an advantage in that they can react quicker and probably don’t have shareholders to worry about and those brands that know their niche and generally stay in their lane will have the best chances of survival. Innovators are going to find it tough as the amount of money sloshing around in the pockets of customers and investors will remain hard to find. I think the market in keeping existing bikes rolling is going to be stronger than the market for new bikes. A year of consolidation ahead I think. For the industry and customers.

New forum

A prediction I think will almost definitely come to pass is that we will have a completely new forum launching pretty soon – no really!

Trumpland

But then who knows what’s around the corner with tariffs, trade wars and changes in governments. Maybe Trump will buy Scotland on a BOGOF deals with Greenland and turn them into Golf theme parks.

Hannah Dobson

Managing Editor

I came to Singletrack having decided there must be more to life than meetings. I like all bikes, but especially unusual ones. More than bikes, I like what bikes do. I think that they link people and places; that cycling creates a connection between us and our environment; bikes create communities; deliver freedom; bring joy; and improve fitness. They're environmentally friendly and create friendly environments. I try to write about all these things in the hope that others might discover the joy of bikes too.

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