Nike's 2026 Doernbecher Freestyle debuts six patient-designed sneakers

Nike unveiled its 22nd Doernbecher Freestyle collection on Friday, six sneakers designed by patients at Oregon Health & Science University's Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland. The lineup spans Air Max, Air Force 1, Air Jordan and a latest-innovation model, with each shoe making its first-ever appearance in the long-running program.

The six models are the Nike Air Max 1/97, Structure Plus, Air Force 1 Mid, ACG Rufus, GT Future and Air Jordan 11 Retro Low IE. Every pair was auctioned in Portland the same day it was unveiled, and a wider U.S. release follows this winter through Nike's Snkrs app and select retailers.

As with every collection in the program, 100 percent of profits go to OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital. The six patient-designers, ranging in age from 9 to 17, were given full creative freedom on their shoes, embedding personal details and references to their medical experiences across each silhouette.

The Air Max 1/97 is the work of Owen William Flint, an 11-year-old diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. His black, orange and yellow take on the hybrid silhouette channels his love of superheroes and dirt bikes, with splattered paint accents and comic book-style lenticular graphics worked into the upper.

Aurora Loss, 9, reshaped the stability-focused Structure Plus running shoe around bilateral dysplastic kidneys. Her design leans into Japanese kawaii culture, layering cherry blossom and anime-inspired detailing across Nike's performance runner for a shoe that reads far softer than the source model.

Royce Short, 12, turned the Air Force 1 Mid into a Western statement driven by his tracheoesophageal fistula. The 12-year-old's fishing, dirt biking and rodeo interests become belt buckle hardware, a custom logo for the company he hopes to start, and a giant bass graphic printed on the translucent outsole.

The ACG Rufus slip-on fell to Charlye Cosgrove, a 15-year-old with osteosarcoma who finished her bone cancer treatment in 2025. She gave the outdoor mule a pink camouflage upper drawn from her baby shoes, a fuzzy moss-green Swoosh nodding to the Pacific Northwest, and a heel tab carrying her name and the date she rang the bell.

Charlye's Rufus also carries the collection's most technical detail: a UV-activated upper that changes color and reveals hidden graphics in the light. It is the ACG model's debut in Doernbecher Freestyle, and the hiking connection runs deep, with the design inspired by her own adventures outdoors in the region.

Kamoryn Marshall, 17, was handed the GT Future basketball sneaker and built a mismatched pair with a pink-to-purple gradient fade. The shades were picked so they stay visible to a colorblind wearer, while chrome details stand in for the titanium right hip from his osteoarthritis diagnosis.

Avery Wilson, 13, used the Air Jordan 11 Retro Low IE as her canvas. Her bright, vibrant pastels express joy, and the shoe is packed with doodles and characters she drew herself, alongside custom friendship bracelets and a keychain of Greg, a British alien she conceptualized.

Nike frames the program as a collaboration about reach. Vanessa Garcia-Brito, the company's vice president and chief impact officer, put it in a press release: for 22 years the partnership has celebrated a shared belief that every kid deserves the chance to reach their potential in sport and in life, with care and youth sport meeting in one collaboration.

A first-timer lineup that ages into collectors' grails

Past Doernbecher drops have delivered genuinely coveted pairs, from food-inspired Air Forces that came with their own utensils to lighter-themed Vomero 5s that now trade as high as $1,000 on StockX depending on size. The 2026 set continues that run of patient-designed originals rather than retreads, and its all-first-timer framing only pushes scarcity harder.

Nike's Doernbecher Freestyle editions are a fixture of our sneaker coverage for a reason: the cause puts proceeds directly toward hospital families and research, and the shoes themselves routinely clear the bar for design. Our guide to white sneakers already names the Air Force 1 the everyday leather standard, and this patient-built Mid takes that silhouette somewhere it has never gone.

The Air Jordan 11 connection lands on familiar ground, too. We have long covered Nike's Jordan collaborations, and a Retro Low IE handed to a 13-year-old artist with joyful pastels and hand-drawn characters is a sharp contrast to the Travis Scott editions we rank elsewhere, where the palette skews darker and the collaborations corporate.

What comes next for the drop

The auction has already closed in Portland, and the wider release is set for this winter on Snkrs and select retail partners, though Nike has not published a firm date or a price for the lineup. Profits from that retail run flow to the hospital as they have for 22 years, keeping the program's engine pointed at the same institution.

For collectors, the immediate question is which pairs heat up. The ACG Rufus is the clear conversation piece with its color-shifting upper, and the Air Jordan 11 brings the model's built-in audience. Both are inside a set where every silhouette is new to Doernbecher, which historically reads as higher resale floor down the line.