Ghost

Is the GHOST POACHA FULL PARTY the best enduro bike for the 2026 season? We put it through the wringer to find out.

Read Review

Is the GHOST POACHA the perfect bike park rig? We tested it to find out.

Read Review

Ghost’s new Poacha is a freeride and bike park bike, it gets 180mm travel and is the launch vehicle for the German brands more gravity-focussed attitude. The Poacha is a completely redesign from the ground up and represents a fresh start, targeting a more youthful audience. The name is a nod to the spirt of freeriding and the choice to go exactly where you want, rather than sticking to the same old well-worn path. Bikes with this much travel are pretty rare in 2025, and none feature in our guide to the best mountain bikes of the year. Which isn’t to say the Poacha isn’t a great bike, more that it’s a fairly niche market, where the biggest competition must come from the likes of the Propain Spindrift CF 5 Ultimate, or the Atherton S.170. – Short of time? Click here to skip to the verdict – Rewind the clock 15 years or so and the German brand Ghost was a household name in the UK. Its bikes were regular test winners in mbr and model names like AMR and (later on) Riot were synonymous with the firm and also very popular. For almost a decade now though, Ghost has been much less visible on British shores. It’s as much a result of changes with distribution and organization within the Accell group it’s part of as it is any shift in public perception of quality or performance. This Accell group I’m talking about is a pretty big player in the cycling market with the likes of Raleigh, Lapierre and Haibike on the books. Accell’s new strategy is to position each individual marque more clearly within its portfolio with less overlap and this sees Ghost coming back reinvented with more attitude and a focus on younger riders, freeride and basically shredding the gnar, rather than sweating the XC climbs. Haibike and Lapierre are going to focus on what they do best, namely a broad range of e-bikes like the Haibike Allmtb 6,  from city to utility to mountain bikes. Over two years of prototyping and testing has gone into the frame design and suspension on board the Poacha. Ghost also has a new roster of riders capable of throwing down the huge moves on it. These include British freeride star Sam Hodgson and one of the most influential freeriders in Germany, Korbi Engstler. Alongside long-term Ghost athlete and Urban DH and 4X champion Tomas Slavik, Korbi was also involved in testing and development from the beginning. Ghost is also sponsoring the huge European Freeride/Slopestyle bike Festival called The Nines to cement its new brand positioning. Obviously keen to make a lot of noise with this project, Ghost invited a load of journalists down to Sicily to do some legit freeriding down a volcano in what must be one of the craziest press trips I’ve been on (and one of the wildest bits of riding you can legally do anywhere in Europe). Forget about health and safety, we were guided by a …Continue reading »

Read Review