Video: 2026 Kia Sportage Up Close: Kia’s Most Popular Model Gets a Refresh

It's updated in a few key areas, but for the most part, it is more or less the same compact crossover that customers already knew and loved. Let's get into it. The biggest visual changes on the outside are definitely gonna be the updated front and rear fascias. We've got a new straighter, edgier bumpers on both the front and the rear. The DRLs are now moved outboard to complement the updated and refreshed headlights and taillights. But for the most part, that's really all that's changed from a visual perspective. That's really all it needed since we already had a refresh for the 2023 model year. The first thing you're gonna notice on the inside of the 2026 Kia Sportage is the new standard curved display here on the dash. This is made up of two or dual 12.3 inch displays. One of them handles the center touchscreen infotainment functions. That does include standard wireless Apple CarPlay, and Android Auto, and the other 12.3 inch display handles the driver display cluster thing for all the information you need right there. That is free digital real estate. What is not so free is the optional 10 inch head-up display right here in the windshield and Kia's new Highway Driving Assist 2, which offers some semi-autonomous hands-on autonomous driving on the highway. Also, other changes are a revised center console here with other than moving stuff around. Kia says it worked with new trim materials or new trim design to reduce the amount of fingerprint smudges. Always a bonus in my book. And finally, my favorite, this new single-spoke, dual-spoke, whatever you wanna call it. It's chunky and it's pretty cool-looking. The new steering wheel, I dig it. The hybrid and the plugin hybrid are the only Sportages that get a powertrain update with the standard hybrid getting a 4 horsepower boost to 231 horsepower and the plugin hybrid getting a 7 horsepower boost to 268 horsepower. And now you can fit the standard hybrid to the second from the base S trim and second from the top X line trim. So not a whole lot changed, but not a whole lot had to change. What about pricing? Well, we don't really know that quite yet. We're gonna learn that closer to the start of production in sometime in the middle of next year. And when we do learn more about that, you know you can go read all about it on cars.com/news.