Literally hundreds of sneakers—if not more—drop in any given year these days. It's no easy feat to discern which were the best of the best, but here we are. With endless debate and staff members fighting tooth and nail over which release deserved to be on such a year-end list, the Complex Sneakers team finally came to a consensus. We pored over which drops should be included from a variety of factors such as cultural significance, performance standards, limited fanfare, and just straight up dopeness.
If you're wondering why some of these differ from our midyear list, it's because we sat down with a group of editors and writers to hash every one of these out, and to be clear, no retros of any O.G. colorway were included to make this fair. From super dope collabs to new signature sneakers, from old school classics to new age runners, here are The 25 Best Sneakers of 2014.