It’s official, and certainly caught us by surprise: Shimano has revamped its popular fourth tier Tiagra groupset, making it 11-speed, and saying the 2026 Tiagra “delivers modernised road performance at an attainable price”. In this spontaneous edition of the road.cc Podcast, Ryan is joined by Jack Sexty, Mat Brett and Stu Kerton to discuss Tiagra’s rebirth, plus what it means for us as riders and Shimano itself.
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The reason this news is so surprising to us is not just because we were left to surmise that the groupset would eventually be phased out – it’s because we were all but told this would be the case in a presentation distributed to the media shortly before the 2023 launch of Shimano CUES, the company’s range of 9-, 10- and 11-speed components that Shimano says is aimed at more recreational riders, commuting and trekking.
In that presentation, Shimano said its ‘mid-tier’ road and mountain bike groupsets (below 105 and SLX level) would be unified under the CUES brand, which surely meant Tiagra, Sora and Claris would be chopped… but now we’ve been told that’s actually not what was being said, and Shimano never explicitly said Tiagra would be phased out. Shimano also introduced a mechanical, 12-speed Shimano 105 groupset when it said that wouldn’t happen following the launch of 105 Di2 in 2022.
With Shimano’s road performance groupsets remaining distinct from the CUES line-up at least four tiers deep after all, where does this leave CUES?
“I think they could bin CUES and it wouldn’t really affect anyone”, says our chief reviewer Stu Kerton.
“You could keep all the road-level groupsets, we’ve got various levels of GRX [Shimano’s gravel-specific groupsets]… the entry-level GRX can be used on all road bikes and hybrids.
“I think CUES has added nothing to the mix, and just given too many options when they aren’t really needed.”
So, is a bike featuring the all new Tiagra groupset now on your wishlist? Will we be sat here next year reporting on Shimano Sora, meaning you might as well wait for that instead? For now, join the discussion in the comments, or press play on the episode to hear the thoughts of road.cc’s finest tech nerds…
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