Quirk Cycles wins best road bike at Bespoked London 2026

Quirk Cycles has secured the Best Road Bike award at Bespoked London 2026 for its Durmitor model, a significant accolade presented as the show opened at the Bussey Building in Peckham. Founded over a decade ago by Rob Quirk in Hackney, the brand has shifted from fully bespoke builds to a ‘custom-lite’ approach, offering a curated range of stock-geometry bikes available to order online. This strategy aims to simplify the commissioning process while retaining the essence of Quirk’s extensive custom design expertise, positioning the company for growth following recent investment from Rapha founder Simon Mottram. The Durmitor stands out as a high-performance road-race bike crafted from Columbus Spirit steel, a premium thin-wall tubing renowned for its strength and lightness. It features Quirk’s own 3D-printed stainless steel components, including dropouts and seat cluster, and is equipped with modern hardware such as a T47 bottom bracket, flat-mount disc brakes, and a tapered steerer fork. The bike is designed exclusively for 35mm slick tyres and is built around Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 electronic groupset and Enve 4.5 Pro wheels, the latter originally developed for UAE Emirates’ pro team and Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar. The presentation of the Durmitor was notably enhanced by a Japanese-themed stand centred around a Honda Alty delivery truck, complete with period-correct Yokohama tyres and Japanese decals spelling out the Quirk name phonetically. This creative display not only celebrated the brand’s attention to detail but also coincided with Bespoked’s upcoming relocation to Osaka, underscoring the international ambitions of both the show and Quirk Cycles. Such meticulous styling reflects the brand’s ethos, where subtle design elements are embedded throughout every bike, whether bespoke or from the stock range. Bespoked London’s move to Peckham and the choice of the Bussey Building as its venue has been widely praised for combining scale with character, marking a new chapter for the show under the stewardship of organisers Petor and Rosie Georgallou. Alongside Quirk, other notable small-batch builders such as Mason, Cotic, and Condor were present, highlighting the diversity and craftsmanship within the UK’s bespoke and limited-production cycling scene. The event continues to reinforce the importance of sustainable, high-quality framebuilding in a market increasingly favouring thoughtful design over mass production.