If You Love Yamaha's 70th Anniversary Livery, You Can Get It On Its Tiny Sportbikes Now

Both the R3 and the R25 get a couple of Yamaha's coolest looks. It's always nice when small displacement bike fans don't get left out.

Photo by: Yamaha

By: Janaki Jitchotvisut

Oct 29, at 9:44am ET

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While it's true that Yamaha's certainly not alone in offering small-displacement sportbikes with liveries that take all your favorite styling cues from the big boys and girls in the lineup, there's a certain clean elegance to its R-line styling that's tough to beat.

Here in the US, the smallest member of the lineup that we currently get is the R3. Elsewhere, even smaller R lineup members like the R25 and R15 sell in massive quantities, because they appeal to large numbers of riders. While good looks are definitely not the only reason someone buys a given bike, they certainly don't hurt.

For the 2026 model year, Yamaha rolled out its classy 70th Anniversary colorway across multiple members of its R lineup, featuring a play on the red and white colorblock pattern that's been a part of Yamaha's design heritage from the start. These bikes also get an understated gold tuning fork emblem, as well as a tasteful little 70th Anniversary badge to help remind you what each one is all about.

Gallery: Yamaha YZF-R3 and R25 and 70th Anniversary Edition

Source: Yamaha

But Team Tuning Fork didn't simply limit its 70th Anniversary livery options to the larger bikes in the R lineup. The US gets the 70th Anniversary livery on the R3, as does Japan and other markets. However, in Japan, you'll also find it available on the 249cc R25, which is pretty excellent.

If you'd prefer to go bolder, you can also find a more traditional Yamaha blue on both the R3 and the R25 in Japan, as well as black or cyan. In both cases, the 70th Anniversary editions in Japan cost slightly more than their regular-edition counterparts, but not by much. They're also limited in numbers to just 200 of the R3 in and just 400 of the R25 in Japan, respectively.

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What's the price difference like? In Japan, the regular YZF-R25 ABS retails for 690,800 yen (including the standard 10% consumption tax), which is about US $4,375 at the time of writing. Choose the R25 70th Anniversary Edition ABS instead, and it's 712,800 yen (about US $4,514). Bump your displacement up to the R3, and the 70th Anniversary Edition is 748,000 yen (about US $4,737). Meanwhile, the regular R3 is 726,000 yen (about US $4,597).

Both bikes are tiny little parallel twins, and according to Yamaha, both weigh in at 169 kilograms (about 372.6 pounds) and have matching seat heights of 780mm. The R3 has a 320cc engine, while the R25's is 249cc. Official power figures are 31 kilowatts (about 41.6 horsepower) at 10,750 rpm and 30 newton-meters (about 22 ft-lbs) of torque at 9,000 rpm for the R3, compared to 26 kW (about 34.9 hp) at 12,000 rpm and 23 Nm (about 17 lb-ft) of torque at 10,000 rpm.