New Balance’s 990v4 Settles Into Autumn With Monarch Burgundy and Pumpernickle

New Balance pairs deep burgundy and warm, bread-toned nubuck for Drop Three of its Made in USA Fall/Winter 2026 lineup, continuing Teddy Santis’s run atop the line.

The U990BR4 lands in a nubuck, synthetic, and mesh build, its upper split between Monarch Burgundy and Pumpernickle, a warm, bread-toned neutral New Balance is leaning on across several pieces this season. Nubuck brings a brushed, slightly fuzzed finish that reads warmer and more textured than the smooth leather the brand tends to favor for its brighter seasonal drops, and backing it with a mesh underlay keeps things from feeling too heavy for a silhouette that started life as a running shoe. The pair arrives as part of Drop Three of the brand’s Made in USA Fall/Winter 2026 collection, alongside the U990BG4, a cooler companion that trades the burgundy for NB Navy, Meteorite, and Kombu across the same construction. New Balance frames both as deep-hued takes on the 990v4, a step darker than the lilac and yellow tones that opened the season back in September.

Neither pair carries an individual price yet. New Balance has set footwear across the entire Fall/Winter 2026 collection between $185 and $220, as the brand detailed in its own announcement of the collection, and Drop Three’s specific release date within that window hasn’t been confirmed either. What is confirmed: the collection opens globally on September 3, 2026, through newbalance.com and select retailer, with six more drops following it through December. New Balance also notes that its Made in USA footwear carries a domestic material value of 70 percent or higher, though the line still makes up a limited share of the brand’s overall U.S. sales.

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Monarch Burgundy and Pumpernickle is the third of seven planned try rotating through four hallmark lifestyle form: the 990v4, 992, 993, and 1300. Drop One opened the season on September 3 with a 990v4 in Grey Violet and Timberwolf alongside a 993 in Morel and Timberwolf, both in hairy suede toned down with a beige New Balance calls Timberwolf. Drop Two turned to the 1300, dressed in Sea Salt, Blue Oyster, and Mulled Wine over embossed pig suede. After Drop Three’s pair of deepened 990v4s, the back half of the rollout moves on to the 992 and 993 entirely: a Medusa Green, Cortado, and Thunder Brown 992 built with Horween basketball leather; a Shadow Blue, Cortado, and Black 993 in embossed suede; a Black, Afterglow, and NB Navy 992; and a Sport Green, Interstellar, and Arctic Grey 992 to close out the year in December. Apparel runs alongside every footwear drop, from heavyweight hoodies and crewneck sweatshirts to a new range of women’s track jackets and skirts, priced between $65 and $225 across the collection. New Balance is framing the whole rollout as a showcase for its domestic manufacturing capacity, built at facility across Maine and Massachusetts rather than overseas. The staggered, multi-drop format itself isn’t new for the line: Santis’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection followed a similar cadence, spreading nine total references across six drops between February and June rather than launching everything at once.

New Balance 990v5 in Red and Brown

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The collection continues under Teddy Santis, who has steered creative direction for New Balance’s Made in USA franchise since being named to the role in April 2021 and formally taking the helm the following year. Santis is better known as the founder of Aimé Leon Dore, the label he built out of Queens in 2014 around a nostalgic, New York-inflected take on classic American sportswear, anchored today by its Nolita flagship on Mulberry Street. He and New Balance had already collaborated for years on limited releases before the brand created the Creative Director post specifically for him, and Santis has said its focus on authenticity over hype was what drew him to take the role on permanently. Aimé Leon Dore’s own trajectory has climbed alongside that work: LVMH Luxury Ventures took a minority stake in the label in January 2022, and the brand has since opened flagship stores in London and Los Angeles, extending the same curated, hospitality-driven retail approach that first built its reputation in New York. The New Balance arrangement has held steady throughout: this fall’s rollout follows a Spring/Summer 2026 collection Santis unveiled earlier in the year, one that pushed the same Made in USA lineup, 990v4 included, toward a bolder, more expressive palette than the range’s earlier neutral-heavy seasons.

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The sil itself dates to 2016, when New Balance updated the 990v3 with a slightly enlarged N logo and a reworked mix of leather, pigskin suede, and mesh across the upper, while carrying over the model’s ENCAP sole unit and EVA foam cushion underneath. The update landed just as oversized, comfort-driven “dad shoes” were resurging across the broader sneaker market, and the 990v4 found an audience well beyond runners almost immediately. New Balance’s collaboration with Stüssy the following year became one of the more coveted 990 releases of that decade, and helped cement the silhouette’s crossover appeal beyond New Balance’s usual running-shoe base. Two versions preceded it in the modern ENCAP era: the 990v3 arrived in 2012 for the shoe’s 30th anniversary and was the version that first paired the ENCAP sole with the ribbed N branding still used today, while the original 990 that started the whole lineage helped establish New Balance’s reputation for premium, U.S.-built running shoes back in the early 1980s. A full ten years after its own debut, the 990v4 remains in active rotation within Santis’s Made in USA collections alongside the newer 992 and 993, running parallel to that much older 990 franchise it grew out of.

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