2025 Kawasaki Versys 1100 Details Leaked

The Kawasaki Versys 1000 has been a mainstay of the range since 2011, adopting a combination of street-oriented suspension, a four-cylinder engine, and adventure-style riding position that was ahead of its time and has since been copied by the likes of Suzuki’s GSX-S1000GX. For 2025 it’s getting a substantial power boost thanks to an upsized, 1,090cc engine and the first details have been leaked via Australian type-approval documents.

The first clue to the new model showed up back in August, when Kawasaki filed for type approval on a “Versys 1100 S” in Australia, but at that state there were no technical details on the paperwork, leaving us with little more than a name to go on, allied to the fact that several major components were carrying over their type approval from the existing Versys 1000, showing that the update wasn’t a clean-sheet redesign. Now the rest of the Australian application has been made, including photographs of a bike that’s visually virtually indistinguishable from the current model.

The paperwork confirms that the new bike packs a 1,099cc version of Kawasaki’s long-running four-cylinder engine. That represents a small, 56cc increase over the previous model, which measures 1,043cc. While the documents don’t detail precisely how the extra capacity is achieved, increasing the stroke from the current 56mm to 59mm, while retaining an unchanged 77mm bore, would hit that 1,099cc capacity on the nose.

With the extra cubes comes a not-inconsiderable power increase, with the peak rising from 118 hp to 133 hp. That might seem a lot for a mere 56cc, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the current Versys 1000 uses a low-compression version of that 1,043cc four, and sportier derivatives of the same engine in the Z1000 and Ninja 1000 SX already top the 140 hp mark, so 133 hp is well within reach. As on the current model, the 2025 bike’s power peaks at 9,000 rpm, 1,000 rpm lower than the Z1000 or Ninja 1000 SX, so the Versys engine is still tuned for torque and rideability rather than outright performance.

If the pictures accompanying the type approval are accurate, and there’s no reason to believe they aren’t, then the new bike is visually unchanged compared to its predecessor. Only differences in details, like the finish on the engine and fork legs (now gray rather than black) as well as the graphics and the adoption of conventional, circular front disc brakes in place of the existing petal design, separate the 1100 from the 2024 Versys 1000.

The Australian approval specifically relates to the Versys 1100 S, but that’s simply because Kawasaki currently only sells the “S” version of the Versys 1000 in that market. Elsewhere there are additional variants, including a base Versys 1000 and the higher-spec Versys 1000 SE, and those are all sure to get the new engine as well. In fact, it would be no surprise if other models sharing the same basic engine design, which originally debuted back in 2010 on the Z1000, also get their own versions of the 1,099cc four. That means we could see the return of the “Z1100″ name for the first time since the ‘80s, as well as a Ninja 1100 SX.