2025 Harley-Davidson Carry-Over Models Announced
What Harley announced… and what it didn’t
Harley-Davidson announced its first batch of models returning for 2025 (well, technically second batch, if you include the returning police bikes confirmed in December, so, let’s say the first batch of consumer models). As usual, the first bikes to be announced are carry-over models, those returning with new color options and pricing adjustments, but no significant mechanical changes. These include the Road Glide, Street Glide, and Road King Special baggers, plus the Road Glide 3, Freewheeler, and Tri Glide Ultra trikes.
If you’re looking for motorcycles that are actually new, you’ll have to wait for the next announcement, set for January 23, which will include the 2025 Custom Vehicle Operations (CVO) lineup, as well as other models. We’ll circle back to this in a moment as we look at what has been announced.
For 2025, Harley-Davidson is introducing a new Factory Custom Paint & Graphics program for select models. Each paint set includes a mother-of-pearl textured background, plus a special black tank medallion with chrome accents. The program will offer three options this year: Midnight Firestorm, Whiskey Firestorm, and Mystic Shift.
The two Firestorm colors include a flame motif that Harley-Davidson has gone back to several times since it debuted on the 1980 Wide Glide. The new flames are given a “ghost fade” effect that changes in opacity at different viewing angles. Midnight Firestorm offers dark flames with a charcoal inner glow over a Vivid Black base. Whiskey Firestorm features Ember Sunglo flames with different shades of orange.
If you’re not into the flame motif, Mystic Shift offers a iridescent look, with the color shifting from dark gun metal to purple to blue at various angles.
The Road Glide and Street Glide are back for 2025, and unsurprisingly unchanged considering they just received an overhaul last year, with the Street Glide earning our MOBO nod for Best Cruiser/Bagger of 2024. The 2025 Road Glide starts at $27,999, a $2,000 increase over the 2024 MSRP. The Street Glide also sees a price increase, with the starting price going from $25,999 to $27,749. That’s a smaller increase compared to the Road Glide, which may suggest the model with the shark-nosed fairing has been outselling the batwinged Street Glide after the redesign.
The Road King Special returns with the same Milwaukee-Eight 114 engine as last year and not the larger 117 engine with liquid-cooled cylinder heads found on the two Glides. Pricing starts at $25,749, for a $750 increase over the 2024 MSRP.
While the three returning touring models each saw price increases, the three returning trikes have been left untouched by inflation, carrying the same prices as 2024. The Freewheeler starts at $31,999, the shark-nosed Road Glide 3 coming in at $34,999. The range-topping Tri Glide Ultra with a batwing fairing, auxiliary lighting, Tour Pak and lower fairings starts at $37,999.
Speaking of Tour Paks and lower fairings, let’s shift our focus back to what Harley-Davidson hasn’t announced yet. The Road Glide Limited and Ultra Limited were not included in the initial batch of returning models, making the future of Harley-Davidson’s full-dress touring models rather murky.
We get a bit of clarity when we dive into Harley-Davidson’s online configurator. For a very brief moment yesterday, the configurator included a “Limited Package” for the 2025 Road Glide, which added a Tour Pak and redesigned lower fairings. This option has since been removed, which suggests that it wasn’t supposed to be made public yet.
Curiously, the Street Glide configurator did not include a similar option. While that option may have been intentionally left off, like the Road Glide’s Limited Package was supposed to be, it may also suggest that it won’t be offered as an option but rather as a standalone model, namely a FLHXU Street Glide Ultra that has appeared in Australian certification documents and briefly mentioned in the fitment section on a page on Harley-Davidson’s site for an accessory brake disc. We’ll likely get official news on Jan. 23.
Along with the new CVO models, the Jan. 23 announcement is expected to include Harley-Davidson’s 2025 Softail cruiser lineup, plus its Adventure-Touring models and Sportsters. Harley-Davidson has set up landing pages for each segment, each with a teaser image. The Sportster page shows what looks like the Sportster S’ fuel tank in the Mystic Shift Factory Custom paint (shown above). The Adventure page shows a Pan America 1250 fuel tank in blue with the same topographic map motif seen on previous model years.
Things get a little more curious on the cruiser landing page. Harley-Davidson tends to alternate between updating its touring and cruiser lines, which means we should expect something to change with the 2025 Softail lineup. The teaser image on the Cruiser page shows what looks like the Low Rider S’ fuel tank. What’s interesting is that the image currently displayed isn’t what was originally published yesterday. With the current image, you can see the reflection of an air intake on the bottom of the fuel tank, but the original image actually showed the top of the intake itself. On mobile versions of the page, the original image showed the entire intake, including a label reading “Milwaukee-Eight 117 High Output.” The updated image has been digitally darkened, but after lightening it up in Photoshop, we can still make out a bit of the label.
This suggests that the Low Rider S, and likely other Softail models, will be getting a higher tuned version of the Milwaukee-Eight, perhaps even with liquid-cooled heads like the "Center-Cooled" engine on the updated touring models.
We’ll know for certain after Harley-Davidson’s announcement on Jan. 23.
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Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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A couple of years I had a problem with my Sportster - under warranty. I asked for a warranty fix, they said the parts weren't available for a couple of months and that they could make a booking 2 1/2 months away.
I then rang spare parts at another dealer and the parts were in stock....
I then went back to the dealer I bought the bike off to book a service for next week, I told them what I wanted done and the parts that needed to be replaced.
The next week I went in to have my "warranty" service. After some confusion I got it fixed under warranty ( new fork tube ). Bad, bad, bad Harley Davidson....
And now they're making them in Thailand they've lost me as a customer. Just corporate money making machines whose customers are there to be exploited.
Next time I want a big vibrator I'll get a battery powered one!
Sooner Harley dies off, the better!