2024 KTM DUKE 990 - "The Sniper" | KTM Duke Motorcycle

If you have ever ridden the 790 Duke and 890 Duke you will know just how much fun they are to ride, we do like them a lot here at Ridefast. Well there’s a new Duke in town (Well in Italy anyway) and she’s heading to SA as we speak.

We can’t wait for this Beasty to hit our shores. The all new KTM 990 Duke, dubbed ‘The Sniper’, blurs the lines between middleweight and litre plus bikes.

The newcomer is powered by a brand new Euro 5+ compliant 947 cc LC8c parallel-twin engine. It features significant camshaft and valve timing changes to make it more rideable, and is cooled with the help of a big radiator. The exhaust is a full stainless steel affair, with revised lambda sensors.

They tell us that the new mill is good for 123 hp at 9,500 rpm and 103 Nm of torque at 6,750 rpm.

The new 990 is closer to the 1290 than it is to the 890, visually.

The 14.5-liter steel fuel tank is flanked by sharp side panels, styled in line with the Duke range’s usual aesthetic. The 990 Duke carries on KTM’s tradition of bizarre, alien-like headlights with a new hollowed-out LED unit that resembles the mandibles of a robotic insect.

The Duke turns 30 this year.

It’s an acquired taste. But Those who know…

They know.

For 2024, you can get the 990 Duke in either orange or metallic black.

One of the KTM 990 Duke’s coolest designs is its die-cast aluminium subframe. It’s not only designed to offer maximum strength with the minimum amount of parts, but also to host the air intake and airbox. So those perforated panels under the seat are functional, feeding air to the intake. The 990 Duke’s seat’s been angled up at the front compared to the 890’s, to make the riding position more stable and stop the rider from sliding forward.

WP APEX Suspension components adorn the 990 Duke at both ends. The 43 mm upside-down forks use an open cartridge design, with compression and rebound damping handled by separate fork legs.

The 990 Duke gets its 17” alloy wheels from the 1290 Super Duke R, with modifications to the rear wheel to make it fit the 990’s swingarm. They’re wrapped in 120/70-R17 and 180/55-R17 Bridgestone S22 tires. Twin 300 mm brake discs sit up front, with a single 240 mm disc at the back; it goes without saying that ABS is standard too.

In the cockpit, a 5” TFT display (and a USB-C charger) offers access to the bike’s five electronic rider modes and various settings. KTM’s new menu design even allows riders to allocate features to four ‘favourites’ slots on the display’s home screen—including readouts like lean angle data. And there’s a track-specific rider mode that lets you mess with the anti-wheelie and launch controls.

KTM’s PowerParts catalogue is already stacked with a bunch of look-fast bits for the 990 Duke, along with a bunch of software upgrades.

KTM pre-installs things like a quick-shifter and additional riding mode features on their bikes, but they leave them disabled until you decide you want them installed.

It’s the same here, but they now give you a demo feature, which turns all the optional software extras on for the first 1,500 km.