adidas Handball Spezial Loafer: The New Trend

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adidas has traded the Handball Spezial’s laces for a penny strap, joining Converse, Nike and New Balance in redrawing the line between sneaker and loafer.

The Handball Spezial has spent years as one of adidas Originals’ most reliable terrace sneakers, and now it has a version with no laces at all. The Handball Spezial Loafer swaps the model’s usual tie-up front for a penny loafer strap running across the forefoot, anchored by a small gold Trefoil pin where a coin would normally sit. Smooth black leather covers the upper, white Three Stripes stretch across the quarter panel, and piping traces the toe to keep the loafer shape defined without pushing the shoe fully into dress-shoe territory. Underneath, the construction stays pure Spezial: a low-profile gum rubber outsole built for grip rather than heel height, which is what keeps the shoe reading as a shoe even once the laces disappear.

The overall effect is a shoe built to sit somewhere between a boardroom and a skate spot, close enough to a real penny loafer to pass with tailored trousers, but still unmistakably a sneaker the moment it’s paired with denim or cargo pants.

Four pairs of loafers arranged on a dark green tufted leather chair, including black shoes with white stripes and burgundy

Adidas leather loafers resting on a green tufted sofa.

The newest colorway, Core Black/Cloud White/Gum, carries the style code KK2786 and released on August 24 for $130 through adidas.com (£100 on adidas’ UK site). A branded textile sockliner and a metal Trefoil pin finish off the small details, and adidas lists the fit as regular, though it is not a limited drop in the sneaker sense. Retailers have reported quick sellouts since launch, and adidas’ own sizing notes flag that the shoe runs small enough to warrant ordering half a size up.

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The Handball Spezial’s DNA goes back to 1979, when adidas built it as a professional indoor handball shoe, prized for the traction and low-to-the-ground fit that the sport demanded. That court shoe outlived its original purpose and became a fixture of European terrace and casual style over the following decades, eventually feeding into the same archival, terrace-revival ethos that later shaped adidas’ dedicated Spezial (SPZL) line, curated since 2014 by longtime adidas collaborator Gary Aspden and built almost entirely around reissuing archival football and court silhouettes rather than chasing new ones. The Loafer keeps that outsole and its handball court traction largely untouched, which is part of why the hybrid works: the bottom half still functions like the sneaker it has always been, while the top half has been redrawn from scratch.

This is also not adidas’ first attempt at the silhouette. The Handball Spezial Loafer has already been through several colorways since its debut earlier this year, including a Warm Vanilla suede pairing, a Wonder White option, an Aurora Coffee suede build, and a Maroon leather version. The Black/White pair is simply the one that has broken through to a wider audience, likely because it reads closest to the classic Handball Spezial colorway that sneaker fans already recognize.

join

The Handball Spezial Loafer lands inside a footwear trend that has been building since 2024, when the New Balance1906L, developed with Japanese designer Junya Watanabe, turned a chunky running silhouette into a slip-on loafer and sold out almost immediately. The style picked up a nickname, the snoafer, and a wave of imitators followed. Hokareleased its own Speed Loafer, built on the Speedgoat midsole, and Puma joined soon after with its own take on the category. Converse entered with the All-Star Coupe GB Loafer and later the All-Star Coinloafer, reworking the Chuck Taylor’s canvas upper and rubber toe cap into loafer form. Nike joined more recently with the Air Max Phenomena, a design that came out of the brand’s Serena Williams Design Crew apprenticeship program. Ahead of its release, the $155 shoe was already listed on resale marketplace StockX for as much as $500, a sign of how much appetite the category has built in a crowded footwear market.

What separates adidas’ entry is the source material. Where New Balance and Hoka built their loafers around running silhouettes, and Converse worked from a basketball court staple, adidas is drawing on a shoe that was already halfway to streetwear before it ever became a loafer. The Handball Spezial has spent decades as a terrace and off-court shoe, so the jump to loafer reads less like a stunt and more like the next logical step in a silhouette that has been drifting toward fashion for years.

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For now, the Handball Spezial Loafer is listed exclusively in women’s sizing on adidas’ own site and at retailers including Nordstrom, a detail that has shaped how quickly certain sizes have moved since the August 24 release. adidas’ product page recommends sizing up given the fit runs small, a note echoed across dozens of customer reviews on adidas’ own site. Foot Locker has framed the release with a simple line on its product page: born in 1979, reborn in 2026.

The shoe has also spread quickly beyond U.S. retail. European stockists including Belgium-based Bellerose already list the Black/White pair alongside earlier colorways, and Japanese retailers picked up the Loafer’s first drops back in May, well ahead of this particular pair going viral stateside. That kind of cross-market pickup, on top of a silhouette already carrying decades of terrace credibility, is a large part of why this colorway in particular has outpaced its earlier Handball Spezial Loafer siblings.

The Black/White pair joins a growing run of Handball Spezial Loafer colorways rather than replacing them, and with the broader snoafer trend still gaining ground across Nike, Converse, New Balance, Hoka, and Puma, it seems unlikely adidas stops at one silhouette rework. Whether the loafer treatment eventually reaches other Originals staples like the Samba or Gazelle remains to be seen, but the Handball Spezial’s terrace-to-loafer pipeline has already proven there is an audience willing to trade laces for a penny strap.