A parawing is a soft, line-controlled wing descended from single-skin paraglider design, flown from a short handheld bar with no inflatable structure. Unlike a wingfoil wing, it can be collapsed, stashed into a waist belt mid-ride, and redeployed later: the capability the whole sport is built on. It pulls horizontally like a tow rope, so the rider builds board speed to get on foil rather than pulling up.
A parawing is the soft, packable traction wing that parawing foiling is named after: a canopy on thin bridle lines, flown from a short bar, with no inflatable frame anywhere. The construction comes straight out of single-skin paraglider engineering, and the paraglider brands know it: Ozone, Flow and Triple Seven all build their parawings on decades of paraglider R&D.
The category is barely two seasons old. BRM’s Maliko V1, the first parawing that could actually go upwind, debuted on August 21, 2024 (The Inertia). Then it got crowded. Our parawing database tracks 18 brands and 40 models, and 2026 retail spans roughly €309 for a Gong Lowkite Plus to $1,640 for the double-skin BRM Paia. Weight is the spec everyone quotes first: a 4.0 m BRM Kanaha weighs 464 g, light enough to disappear into a stash belt.
No other lined wing lets you do this: stash it mid-ride, then deploy it again out on the water. That capability, not wing handling, drives the skill tree; parawinging vs wingfoiling vs kiteboarding covers how the three stack up.
Every brand names it its own way. Gong says “lowkite”; F-One (Quest), Aeryn and Eleveight say “pocket wing.” Same family. The split that matters is construction: single-skin models (BRM, Ozone Pocket Rocket, F-One Frigate) are the lightest and most packable but sit deeper in the wind window, while double-skin/ram-air designs (BRM Paia, Triple Seven P.T. Hybrid) keep driving upwind even fully sheeted out and cost you pack size in return. Know the downside before you buy. A downed parawing does not float the way an inflatable wing does, and its lines tangle; line management is the tax on stashability. Model-by-model comparisons live in the parawing database; the rest of the vocabulary is in the glossary.