Best Trail Running Shorts of 2026

Yes, but only when the pockets sit in the waistband instead of down the legs. A wide stretch waistband with drop-in pockets carries a flask, a few gels, a phone and a key without bouncing, while the same load in a leg pocket swings on every stride because it hangs off a moving limb. Weight held flat and high against the small of your back barely moves, because that part of you is doing the least traveling.

This is why a wide waistband with pockets built into it beats a short with two deep hand pockets, however roomy the hand pockets look on a hanger. What to look for, in order. First, a waistband deep enough to hold something, roughly three to four fingers wide, cut from a stretch mesh or a stretch woven instead of a folded-over casing with a drawcord threaded through it.

Second, whether the openings face upward and inward, so a flask stays put when you bend to scramble instead of gaping outward where a stride will work it loose. Third, at least one closed pocket, zipped or deep and snug, for a car key and a phone. The phone is the awkward one: heavy, rigid, the item you least want to lose, and a short that swallows a modern phone without slapping your thigh is doing something difficult.

A drop-in waistband pocket usually beats a zip pocket for a flask, because you want to pull it out and put it back one-handed while moving, and a zip needs two hands and a stop. The short that made this a category is the Ultimate Direction Hydro Short, which builds a storage belt into its waistband and ships with two soft flasks.

It isn't ranked here because it has no Amazon rating pool at all, but it's the shape the good ones are converging on, and it's worth looking at direct if carrying is the only thing you care about.

Buy a brief liner for runs under an hour, a boxer-brief liner or a 2-in-1 once runs get long, and go linerless only if you already own the layer you want underneath. There are four builds, and run length and how much you chafe are what decide between them. A brief liner is the traditional answer: a light mesh brief sewn into the shell, minimal fabric, dries fast, and completely fine if your runs are under about an hour and you don't have a chafing problem.

A boxer-brief liner extends down the inner thigh, which is exactly where skin rubs skin on a long effort, and it's the most useful upgrade for most people once runs get long. A 2-in-1 goes further: a genuine compression short bonded or sewn inside the shell, so the inner layer holds your thigh, not merely covering it, and crucially it doesn't ride up, because it's anchored to the shell instead of floating free.

That anchoring is the whole point, and it is why a 2-in-1 usually beats a shell with a loose boxer liner tacked in at one seam. Then linerless, which sounds like the cheap option and isn't. A linerless shell lets you choose your own next-to-skin layer and replace it on its own schedule, since the liner always wears out long before the shell does. This is the modular idea Path Projects built a company on.

The catch is that you have to actually buy the liner, so budget for a compression short or a purpose-made running brief underneath, and don't run in cotton underwear, which holds water and will chafe you badly. Three of the picks here are linerless on purpose and are priced as shells, so read them as half a system rather than a bargain.

Between five and seven inches covers most trail running, and the honest answer is that this is more personal than any spec on the page. What the number controls is the trade between stride freedom and coverage. A short inseam moves out of the way of a high knee and vents well, which is why mountain racers wear them; a long one protects your thighs from brush, sun and a fall onto scree, and gives a liner more room to do its job.

Here is the useful way to think about the range. Three inches is a racing length and largely a road habit, and it exposes a lot of thigh. Five inches is the modern default: enough coverage for most terrain, no interference with a big step up, and the length most trail-specific shorts are cut to. Seven inches is where the long-run crowd sits, because it covers the inner thigh properly, which is the part that chafes, and it stops the hem riding into your groin on a steep climb.

Nine inches and up starts behaving like a hiking short, which is fine if you hike-run but adds fabric that flaps on a descent. One detail matters more than the number: a split hem or a side vent lets a shorter-feeling short have a longer inseam, because the leg opening flares as your knee comes through. That is how a seven-inch short can move like a five.

If you are between lengths and your runs are getting longer, size up in inseam rather than down, since chafing is a much worse problem than a slightly warm thigh.

A light stretch woven for the shell and a knit for the liner, and never cotton anywhere in the system. Most good trail shorts use a nylon or polyester stretch woven face fabric, usually with a few percent elastane, because a woven resists abrasion from brush and rock far better than a knit while still moving with you. That abrasion resistance is the real reason trail shorts differ from road shorts on fabric: the failure mode on trail is a snag or a slide, not wear from washing.

Denier is the shorthand for yarn weight, so a higher number means a tougher and heavier cloth, and trail shorts sit at the low end because nobody wants to carry the extra. What you actually want to test for is drainage. Go through a creek in a knit short and you carry the water for the next twenty minutes; a light woven sheds most of it in a few strides and is merely damp.

That difference is unpleasant to learn the hard way on a cold day. A DWR finish helps and is worth having, though understand what it is: a surface treatment with no membrane involved, good for spray, wet grass and light drizzle, and done once the face fabric wets out. How well it sheds is measured by the AATCC 22 spray test, which scores a fabric from 0 to 100 after water is sprayed at it, so a maker quoting a spray rating is quoting that.

It wears off, and it can be renewed with a wash-in treatment. Do not buy shorts hoping they will keep you dry in rain, because a fabric that genuinely stops water doesn't breathe enough to run in. Two smaller things worth checking: flat seams, not raised ones anywhere the liner touches skin, and a gusset in the liner. Both cost the maker very little and decide whether hour four is comfortable.