Best winter tyres for road cycling
The best winter tyres for your road bike are an essential seasonal upgrade, tested and rated by our experts for durability, rolling resistance, and puncture protection
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When winter approaches, it’s sensible to prepare your bike accordingly. And a good place to start is by adding a set of the best winter tyres for road cycling. While things like punctures and poor road surfaces are year-round issues, it is in the winter when bicycle tyres are most vulnerable. Let's face it, no one wants to be standing by the side of the road when it's wet and cold.
The best winter tyres used to be a compromise. From our testing, we found the gap is narrowing to the best tubeless endurance tyres, and you can get durability and puncture protection without increasing rolling resistance. Consider tyres like our best overall, the Schwalbe Durano Plus, or the very latest All-Season Blackbird from Hutchinson. Both offer excellent performance on the road and during wintery conditions.
The Durano Plus benefits from Schwalbe's Addix compound that's both grippy and durable, while Smartguard protection keeps punctures at bay.
The combination of the width, casing and compound make the Elite XP a comfortable tyre indeed. A tightly-woven protective layer helps add some reassurance too. Not tubeless compatible however.
A blend of reliable puncture protection with a hardwearing and grippy compound makes this tubeless-ready tyre ideally suited to the vagaries of winter roads.
Offered in widths from 24mm to 35mm, the Cinturato Velo uses both bead-to-bead protection and an aramid breaker to help avoid punctures, while the compound is fast rolling and grippy.
Our expert review:
Schwalbe's Durano Plus isn't marketed as a winter road tire but it has all the attributes you'd expect. The Addix compounded balances grip and durability and the Smartguard offers excellent puncture protection. We found it was both fast rolling and incredibly confidence inspiring. In fact the more we ride with this tyre, the more we trusted the grip on offer, which in turn raised confidence too.
From a puncture testing perspective, we rode hundreds of kms with this tyre and haven't had a single puncture, whilst there were some small flints in the rubber. Clearly the SmartGuard puncture protection strip does the job it’s supposed to and stops these shards penetrating.
For it's price it's quite heavy, even in comparison to others we've tested with decent puncture protection. But it's not all about weight, the confident feel of the tyre far outweighs the extra 100g you'll add to your bike.
Our expert review:
Winter tyres aren't always the most glamorous things to test, largely because it means I have to don my waterproofs and get out in the worst of the weather. However, given that I was rather impressed by the summer-oriented Hutchinson Blackbird Race tyres when I was keen to see how All Season version performed.
As you might expect from something billed as a winter-friendly tyre, the All-Season comes in a little heavier, only around 40g per tyre at 350g/12.3oz versus 310g/10.9oz. Given that its suggested lifespan is over 6000km/3700miles and the rubber is 2.1mm thick thats pretty impressive.
After covering over 1000km on the Blackbird this winter, they have so far lived up to their racing siblings. At first, set up with some of the best TPU inner tubes from WTB, and then tubeless, they haven't missed a beat. No punctures, no obvious damage or cuts, and very few signs of wear.
I was a little disappointed with the ride feel, maybe slightly unrealistic for a winter tyre and what I'd hope a 30mm tyre could offer. That is par for the course with these types of tyres, always has been. Given the overall performance of the Blackbirds on the road, which is far from slow and with zero punctures, it just reminds me I can't have my cake and eat it too, just yet.
Our expert review:
Challenge specialises in handmade tires and the Challenge Elite XP is no exception. It comes with a double ply casing with 220TPI and a more tightly woven puncture protection layer. The bead too is protected. That's paired with a tread compound called Challenge's 'Smart Plus', which was created as a 'gravel-specific' tread compound, elevating grip, durability and traction.
The Challenge Elite XP is available in 25mm and 27mm sizes. We found that the 27c tire gave a really comfortable ride that didn't feel like a winter tire and there was plenty of grip into corners. It's not tubeless compatible, so you'll need to be happy running with tubes.
Out on the road, the Elite XPs felt as comfortable and supple as any race tyre. Indeed for a winter ready tyre, we thought the ride quality was actually exceptional, whilst the grip in the corners felt solid. Additionally we had no concerns in the wet either.
Our expert review:
With a range of size options, this is a winter tire that should fit the majority of needs. The parabolic profile aids with grip in the corners, making for confident descending.
Puncture resistance comes from its bead-to-bead Endurant casing. This is a lighter version of the Kevlar and Nylon used in Specialized’s toughest Armadillo tires, and Specialized now offers the Roubaix Pro in a tubeless version too.
Rolling relatively quickly, the only downside we found of these tires comes from their weight, they are a little hefty compared to their immediate competitors.
Our expert review:
Designed to offer high puncture protection without undue rolling resistance, the Pirelli Cinturato Velo TLR tire is a good winter/training option. There's an aramid breaker under the rubber with a second bead-to-bead protective area to help keep your sidewalls intact, while Pirelli says that its SmartNET Silica rubber compound “ensures grip safety in all weather conditions”.
There are five width options starting at 24c and heading up to 35c, so the Cinturato Velo tire caters for the whole range of clearances offered by modern road bikes and heads up into light gravel territory too.
Tubeless set-up was trouble-free and the riding was without punctures. They felt significantly faster than rival winter tires for road cycling too, hence being our top pick for speed in this guide, and coped admirably with a few gravel excursions on the way.
At Cycling Weekly, we're passionate about testing a wide range of products, and our testing methods and criteria are tailored to each specific category. For instance, we know that testing road bikes and gravel bikes requires different approaches, right?
When it comes to the best winter bike tyres, we carefully evaluate factors like protection, durability, and grip. Our team puts rubber to the road in all weathers, sharing insights directly from their experiences. For winter tyres, we are largely looking at durability, you want to be able to fit and forget a winter tyre and grip, no good having a tyre thats durable if you can't keep it upright.
All the tyres in this test are ridden through a variety of conditions to make sure their performance is clear, no matter where you ride.
It's important to mention that our testing is carried out by Cycling Weekly's dedicated team of experienced cyclists. We believe this helps us provide more in-depth reviews and richer insights. When we say we’ve reviewed a product, it means we’ve spent quality time on familiar roads or trails, really getting to know it. And just to reassure you, no manufacturer can pay for a review—our editorial integrity is always our top priority. Learn more about 'How we test' with our helpful guide.
Tim is one of the few contributors we have who rides both tubed and tubeless, okay, with TPU tubes, which makes his opinion on tyres very valuable. Also, being based in the North of England means he has to ride in all conditions, so any bike he rides needs durable, reliable rubber.
Also living in the North of England, Rachel usually prefers durability, reliability, and practicality over pure performance, and that’s totally understandable. Given the mileage she puts in training for her events and her busy life as a writer and mum, she doesn’t want to find herself stranded on the side of the road too often.
We'd suggest running wider tyres as they can be run at lower pressures, providing more grip and in turn a more comfortable ride. They also tend to be a little more resistant to punctures.
Although these are all valuable qualities in a winter tire, it is worth checking your bike’s clearances before sizing up, particularly on an older bike frame, to avoid any rubbing on the frame or mudguards.
Running tubeless does bring many benefits: less weight, better rolling resistance, the ability to run lower pressures, and to self-seal punctures. In some cases, this can make tubeless tyres a very compelling option, especially for amateur racers for whom a mid-race puncture spells the end of your day. The majority of newer tyres are now designed to be run tubeless.
However, for winter riding, there are other considerations. With higher pressures of road tires, sealant (especially the thinner viscosity types) struggles to seal holes compared to a lower pressure system like in a cyclocross, gravel or mountain bike tyre.
Even still, the chance of a puncture self-sealing is still quite high, making tubeless a great choice on a wheelset built for speed. But, when it comes to winter riding, prevention is better than cure and a traditional hard-wearing clincher setup delivers reliable performance.
There is also the cost to consider. Tubeless tyres tend to be more expensive than their clincher cousins, so it can make economic sense to run winter tires with inner tubes.
Lower weight and lower rolling resistance will make you go faster but at the expense of puncture protection — there is always a compromise to be made. In the summer, the balance is going to be tipped in favour of speed, but puncture resistance won’t be completely forgone, for obvious reasons.
In the winter, when chasing seconds becomes of lesser importance, and the risk of punctures is greater, the scale tips the other way. But not completely. Although some may go for the opt-out of solid tyres, most of us will accept a small chance of punctures in return for the performance and benefits of pneumatic tires, such as comfort, grip, and speed.
TPI stands for 'Threads Per Inch'. The rubber on a tyre is just the outer coating, beneath that are the threads that make up the carcass. Some tires use a smaller number of thicker threads, while others use a higher number of thinner threads.
With a higher number of Threads Per Inch, tyres tend to be more supple, but they are less robust and are damaged more easily; so a tire with a mid-range TPI count is best suited for winter riding.
Tyres will generally enlist a variety of compounds for different performance enhancements. Along the centre of the tyre, a harder compound tends to be used, being harder wearing and more resistant to punctures.
The compounds on the side tend to be softer, offering more grip when the bike is banked over in tight corners. This part of the tyre doesn’t spend as much time in contact with the ground, so wear is less of an issue.