Six of thee best new clipless pedals to help you lock in on your next ride

SPD pedals, or clipless pedals, aren’t new. But there are a lot of new options out there, many with interesting new features. Thinner, wider, lighter, less light, new cleat designs, adaptable cleat designs, adjustable Q-factor, and new materials. These are all features that help set new SPD pedals apart from what’s come before.

Here are six of the newer and most interesting clipless options on the market, including a few new Canadian offerings, to keep you locked in on your next ride.

Six of the best new clipless pedals

XTR now looks a lot more like Saint from this angle.

XTR M9220 enduro pedals.

Shimano’s cut weight away wherever it could.

Shimano – XTR M9220

Shimano’s trail pedals have evolved at a glacial pace, until 2025. Steady, incremental updates kept the platform version of Shimano’s XC pedal among the better options on the market. With the new XTR, though, the Japanese brand redesigns XTR Trail with its own distinct personality, purpose built for enduro/trail riding instead of deprived from XC racing.

There’s a wider platform and, finally, the option to run pins. XTR is narrower and lighter than the full downhill Saint pedals, but provides significantly more support than the prior generation of minimalist platform XTR Trail (M9120) pedals, which is a very welcome change. The new pedal body height is nearly identical to the prior XTR Trail pedal, but that width does extend out further.

The new pedal coincided with a rare update from Shimano: a new SPD cleat. The CL-MT001 is compatible with any Shimano clipless pedal, and you don’t need it to run the new XTRs, but they are a nice bonus that will ship in the box with every trail pedal. Shimano XTR M9220 are $350 in Canada and weigh 448g per pair.

Alt. is the standard

Del. is a minimalist, gravel focused option

Ctrl. aims for more support for trail riding

Wolf Tooth – Ctl. Alt. Del.

Minnesota’s Wolf Tooth continues to steadily expand its line of Made in the U.S.A. products with its first clipless pedal. Well, it’s first three clipless pedals. After releasing several flat pedal options, Wolf Tooth released the Ctl. Alt. Del. trio all at once. The range covers trail, xc, and gravel riding. But all three feature a common, and innovative mechanism to adjust Q-Factor. Why? Well, if you want XC pedals on your gravel bike, or gravel pedals on your drop-bar-mtb conversion, you probably want a different Q-Factor to suit.

This trio of pedals covers a range of riding from gravel to…