Ducati’s Street‑Legal 450 Enduro
Motorcycles
Vehicle Manufacturer
2026-02-06
Author
João Pereira
Ducati’s off-road racing plans are about to hit the street. The Desmo450 EDS—the road-legal bike built on Ducati’s new 450 platform—looks set to launch later this year.
Ducati teased it at EICMA last November with a “preview” model that clearly wasn’t the finished production version, and they didn’t share much beyond the basics. But now, with European design registration images leaking, we’re getting a much clearer idea of how Ducati is turning its race-bred 450 into a proper street-legal machine.
The EDS is the third bike in Ducati’s 450cc off-road family, coming after the Desmo450 MX motocross model and the Desmo450 EDX enduro racer.
The MX and EDX are pretty similar overall—they share the same basic chassis setup and both have a tall 38.2-inch seat height. The enduro version just tweaks a few things for longer rides, like a bigger 2.2-gallon tank, and it swaps the 19-inch rear wheel for an 18-inch.
Weight is another small difference: the MX is about 232 pounds dry, while the EDX carries a bit more equipment and lands around 240 pounds.
For the street-legal EDS dual-sport, Ducati is starting with the off-road-focused EDX as the base, and the newly spotted design docs give us a first look at some of the updates it’s getting.
The exhaust is one of the biggest changes here. Instead of the EDX’s race-style pipe, the EDS gets a longer header that loops farther down in front of the engine, and it adds an O₂ sensor along the way. The flatter expansion chamber used on the off-road models is also swapped out for a more traditional round catalytic converter, tucked behind a heatshield.
All of that suggests Ducati has done more than just bolt on a few street parts—it looks like there are internal updates too, mainly to meet emissions rules and stretch out maintenance compared to the MX and EDX. Those bikes need oil changes every 15 hours and a piston swap every 45 hours. Ducati’s also expected to add radiator cooling fans, even though they don’t show up in the design images.
The EDS is expected to come with a six-speed gearbox and the larger 2.2-gallon tank, plus a bunch of street-ready add-ons like a small dash, key ignition, sidestand, mirrors, turn signals, and a proper license-plate mount. The suspension looks mostly carried over from the EDX (49mm Showa forks and a Showa rear shock), though Ducati may tweak the settings to handle the extra road-legal weight.
With production planned for this summer, the EDS is close to the finish line—and it’ll be jumping into a tough dual-sport class with KTM, Honda, and Beta. Still, Ducati’s aiming to stand out with its desmo engine, race-based chassis, and premium parts, marking its first real street-legal enduro.
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