Harley-Davidson has had a dearth of its performance focused ST models lately, with the US website currently offering only two, the cruiser Low Rider and the adventure tourer Pan America 1250. It looks like the American company is fixing that next year, with three more models expected to add to the line-up. We believe the models to be the Road King ST, Road Glide ST and Street Glide ST, all of which fall under the ‘Grand American Touring’ category. Currently, Harley-Davidson sells the latter two exclusively in CVO (Custom Vehicle Operations) guise.
- Besides Road King ST, four other Harleys are expected for 2027
- The ST could be powered by the Milwaukee-Eight 117 engine
Road King ST set to arrive in 2027: What else can we expect?
More powerful than the 2025 Road King, and ‘sporty’ suspension
A brief untangling of Harley-Davidson’s nomenclature before we get back to the motorcycles. ST refers to Softail frame which essentially means that these motorcycles are performance-oriented, with more powerful engines and a more sophisticated suspension setup compared to their non-ST counterparts. As for CVO, it is more intense than your average factory custom program. CVO models are usually very limited in number, and get exclusive part upgrades, beautiful material finishes and colour schemes that ‘regular’ Harleys don’t get. The American manufacturer is also known to have tested new accessories and colour schemes via this program, before rolling it out at a larger scale since the program’s debut in 1999.
The Road King ST is expected to find its way onto the lineup next year, thanks to Harley-Davidson creating an accessories page for it (which has now been taken down). While we have no idea what any of these motorcycles will look like, thanks to the accessories pages, we know that the Road Glide ST and the Street Glide ST will also be available in non-CVO guise next year. The last time this happened was in 2023, before H-D rolled out its current touring platform. The Road King was last seen in 2025 in Special guise, when it was powered by the Milwaukee-Eight 114 engine and came equipped with side cases but no windshield (as shown in the picture above). The regular Road King was last seen in 2022, powered by the Milwaukee-Eight 107 engine, with side cases as well as a windshield.
We expect the Road King ST to run on the Milwaukee-Eight 117 engine, similar to most of Harley’s other touring models. Typical for ST motorcycles, we expect all three models to have more performance-focused suspension and braking setups. For context, the CVO versions of the Road Glide and Street Glide motorcycles are powered by even more powerful Milwaukee-Eight 121 engines. The non-CVO Road Glide and Street Glide will also likely lose out on their carbon components (a CVO exclusive), besides getting downgraded to a slightly lower powered engine, which could be the same Milwaukee-Eight 117.
The fact that Harley-Davidson has started working on the website pages likely indicates that these motorcycles are slated to arrive soon, more than likely with new colour options as well. Alongside the three motorcycles above, H-D has also set up accessory pages for other non-CVO models as well, such as the Deadwood and the Super Glide, tacitly indicating that they too are going to enter the market soon.
Source: Motorcycle.com
Vishal Venugopal
Ved Janve
