This Shoe Changed Everything for HOKA. Now, It's Back
Ubiquitous as HOKA is these days, you might not recall the days where it was considered "uncool." Crazy to think about considering that it makes just about every daily driver sneaker you see strolling the streets but, hey, we were less civilized back then.
You can't really point to a single shoe as helping change HOKA's fortunes — the Bondi 7 definitely deserves some credit — but if I had to tip my fedora to one style above all else, it'd have to be the Tor Ultra Lo. This low-top trail shoe was way too good to last forever. Or, really, any time at all.
Even the Tor Ultra Lo's 2026 revival is frustratingly exclusive, hardly making it any easier to acquire one of the world's greatest crossover trail shoes.
Popularized by a 2018 Engineered Garments collaboration, the Tor Ultra Lo was, as the name implies, a less-tall version of HOKA's sublime Tor Ultra hiking boot. The Tor Ultra was a great shoe. Meaty in all the right ways, techy and funky and weird like a wearable Gundam mech, it really epitomized the golden age of HOKA footwear design.
Not that HOKA's hitting a rough patch by any means — quite the opposite, really — but the Tor Ultra was such a perfect distillation of everything that made HOKA great And the Tor Ultra Lo made it palatable to a wider audience, shaving down the imposing silhouette to a more digestible but still huge shape.
Hype for the EG iterations can't be overstated: These shoes flew. And then never restocked. HOKA would occasionally restock the Tor Ultra boot and its accessible sibling from time to time but it was phased out save for the rare collab. Thanks to the residual buzz, however, HOKA immediately saw big upticks across the lifestyle space as it properly transitioned from performance shoemaker to cool-guy brand. One shoe changed everyone's perception of HOKA.
Now, in the wake of HOKA eating Nike's lunch, is it so crazy to posit that big-time collabs like Haven and Marni — plus shelf space at the world's leading sneaker boutiques — might not have come were it not for the Tor Ultra Lo? Perhaps. But this is the shoe that opened those doors.
HOKA would eventually replace the Tor Ultra Lo with updated styles like the Tor Summit and original Kaha hiker but the vibe was never the same. The Tor Ultra Lo just hit a sweet spot of volume and form that no successor ever matched. It was never widely available, and seemingly never would be again.
Until August 2026.
Japanese retailers Mita Sneakers and UNITED ARROWS announced simultaneous drops of the Tor Ultra Lo in a classic green colorway complete with GORE-TEX lining. The shoe is even available in extremely limited numbers, which means you and I certainly won't get one. It's 2018 all over again!
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