How Safe Is the Redesigned 2026 Subaru Outback?

What Car Shoppers Need to Know

• 2026 Subaru Outback is an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Top Safety Pick+.
• Top Safety Pick+ is the agency’s highest safety award.
• The Subaru Outback is redesigned for 2026.

Subaru’s 2026 redesign of the Outback station wagon not only addressed nearly every one of the fan favorite’s shortcomings, it also built on existing strengths. Whereas its predecessor was named a Top Safety Pick by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the new model ranks as a Top Safety Pick+. Top Safety Pick+ is the institute’s highest honor for occupant protection, and is awarded only to vehicles that score top marks in numerous crash tests and safety evaluations.

Related: 2026 Subaru Outback Review: Forget the Looks, Enjoy the Ride … and Value and Comfort

Outback Crash-Test Scores

The agency’s test battery consists of two frontal crash tests and a side impact, in which vehicles are rated on a scale of good, acceptable, marginal or poor. To qualify as a Top Safety Pick+, a vehicle must score good in all three crash tests.

Additionally, IIHS evaluates vehicles’ crash-prevention systems in tests involving other vehicles and pedestrians, and it rates vehicles’ headlights on how well they illuminate a dark road. Acceptable ratings in some of these tests will still qualify a vehicle as a Top Safety Pick+, but the 2026 Outback needed no such allowances: It swept the full battery of tests, earning good scores in every single evaluation.

The new Outback has not yet been crash-tested by the government-run National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But vehicles that score highly in IIHS testing generally earn the top five out of five stars from NHTSA.

Versus Competitors

IIHS safety awards are highly marketable, prompting many of the Outback’s competitors to build vehicles that also qualify as Top Safety Pick+. Even among these, however, the Subaru’s performance stands out. Multiple factors inform the overall rating in each evaluation; for example, to arrive at a rating of good, acceptable, marginal or poor for just the small overlap front crash test, IIHS scrutinizes structural deformation, dummy movements and injury risk measurements for four different areas of the body. These evaluations are done on two dummies in two separate crashes, one on the driver’s side of the vehicle and one on the passenger side.

While numerous mid-size SUVs have ratings similar to the Outback, delving into these individual criteria for most will reveal the occasional acceptable or marginal result for some measure that fed into an overall good score for that test. But dig into the Outback’s full results, and just about the only place you’ll find the highest score for every test. Of the vehicles in the table below, only the Honda Passport has a similarly spotless record.

The chart below only lists crash-test scores and doesn’t include IIHS’ headlight or front crash prevention evaluations. Still, it does better than quite a few rivals.

IIHS 2026 Mid-Size SUV Safety Ratings

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