For its 2026 After Dark Tour, a nighttime race series of 10Ks and half-marathons for women, Nike designed a multipurpose medal that’s meant to be worn long after race day as a necklace, bracelet, keychain loop, or belt chain.
It features a Nike Swoosh and chain adorned with miniature laser-engraved Swooshes that can fit in the palm of your hand. Each comes with a city-specific carabiner for the places where the races take place: London; Shanghai; Los Angeles; Mexico City; Sydney; Manila, Philippines; and Mumbai, India. Most finisher medals end up in a drawer, the thinking goes, but this medal was designed to leave the house.
“The Nike After Dark Tour isn’t a traditional race, so the medal didn’t need to be traditional either,” Elizabeth Brock-Jones, Nike’s footwear development director, tells Fast Company.
The new medal was designed by an all-woman team, which helped get the details just right.
“Because women led every stage of the process, we designed for things we’d experience ourselves: how it hangs when you move, whether it catches in your hair, whether you can open the clasp with longer nails,” Brock-Jones says. “We wanted something women would actually reach for, not just something that looked good on paper.”
The carabiner took about seven rounds to perfect and the chain system at least five. To cut down on the design timeline, the team traveled to Italy to work directly with its manufacturing partner to make decisions in real time instead of waiting for samples.
For Nike, the new medal is the latest example of the sportswear brand’s outreach to women, a demographic group it’s courting through partnerships like NikeSkims, advertising, and events, like competitions. Nike hosted a series of women’s races in major cities from 2005 to 2015. Then last year it launched the After Dark Tour, a race series it said was “designed to be the ultimate girls’ weekend.”
The 2025 medal was unconventional, too. It featured a shoelace-inspired chain that worked like a reflective, sweat-proof bolo tie on one side with a magnetic closure on the other and a textured Nike Swoosh. After seeing how runners actually wore it, the design team was inspired to make this year’s medals intentionally as something that could be worn as jewelry.
“We saw women styling the 2025 medal in ways we never intended,” Brock-Jones says. “They put it on bags, layered it with their own jewelry, and made it part of their everyday look.”
Nike also designed a small, matching accessories collection including hoop and stud earrings featuring swooshes. The products are available to After Dark runners as a gift with purchase at select race locations.
All race medals are mementos, but by turning this medal into a multipurpose jewelry piece, Nike hopes it will keep the race—not to mention everything that led up to it—much more front of mind.
“Every time she sees it, we hope it brings her back to the early mornings, the long training runs, and the setbacks she pushed through to get there, while reminding her what she’s capable of next,” Brock-Jones says.