Sometimes, one small design change can radically remake a car. The Kia Sportage will get one such change for 2026.
The Sportage is due for a mid-cycle refresh that will appear in 2025 for the 2026 model year. A mid-cycle refresh is not a complete redesign but a styling and technology update at the mid-point of a model’s production run. Kia revealed the refreshed car to the press in its home country of South Korea this week and released a pair of teaser videos on YouTube showing the updated look.
Kia usually sells the same Sportage in South Korea and the U.S., So the new model is likely headed for our shores soon.
There’s no way to say this that doesn’t come across a little backhanded, but we’ll go with it – the 2026 Sportage finally looks mature and polished.
Our editors have long respected Kia’s compact SUV. The prior generation, sold from 2017 through 2022, was oddly bulbous but carried a long standard feature list for a low price and, with Kia’s exceptional 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty, was an excellent long-term value.
A complete redesign for the 2023 model year fixed the overinflated look, bringing a more angular design language inside and out. It’s among the larger mainstream compact SUVs and still has the same virtues but in a more attractive package. It lost our Compact SUV Best Buy Award to the Honda CR-V. But we had to give the Sportage a hard look, so strong is its value argument.
However, there’s still something off about its appearance. Huge boomerang-shaped daytime running lights dominate its aggressive front fascia. There’s nothing else like them in Kia’s design stable, and they stand out enough to be the first thing you notice about the car. They don’t fit the otherwise mature design language.
I can never shake the impression the 2024 Sportage was a teenager dressed in his first suit but insisting on basketball shoes.
For 2026, Kia finally talked the kid into dressing up all the way. The 2026 Sportage will get the brand’s now ubiquitous “star map” linear lighting theme.
It wildly remakes the car’s look, pulling the outfit together instead of contrasting with it. The future Sportage will have more in common with big brothers Sorento and Telluride. New rear light treatments bring more subtle lines.
Inside, the side-by-side screens in the current Sportage appear slightly curved in 2025, and the gear shifter takes the form of a dial.
Several Asian news outlets report that Kia has gone with a smaller, less powerful 4-cylinder engine for the Korean market, but we’re skeptical they’ll do the same in the U.S.
It could be most of a year before we know for sure. Automakers are just now shipping 2025 models of many cars to dealer lots. Kia may not formally reveal the 2026 Sportage for the U.S. until late next year. We’ll bring news when they do.
