2027 Kia Telluride Earns IIHS Top Safety Pick+ Rating for 2026

The redesigned 2027 Kia Telluride has earned the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s Top Safety Pick+ award for 2026, the organization’s highest rating. The three-row SUV joins four other Kia models with the same 2026 distinction: the K4 sedan, the EV9, the Sorento built after September 2025, and the Sportage built after May 2025. For shoppers cross-shopping midsize SUVs, that puts Kia’s flagship family hauler in the same safety tier as some of the best-tested vehicles on sale right now.

What Top Safety Pick+ Actually Requires

IIHS tightened its 2026 testing protocols compared with prior years, and the changes lean hard on rear-seat occupants, a group that older crash tests often shortchanged. Vehicles now need good ratings in a moderate overlap front crash test that specifically measures rear passenger protection, on top of the standard driver-side results. Pedestrian crash avoidance requirements also rose: a Telluride-class SUV needs a good rating in the pedestrian front crash prevention test and at least an acceptable rating in the newer vehicle-to-vehicle 2.0 test. Headlights across every trim level, not just the top one, must rate acceptable or good. Miss any one of those marks and the Top Safety Pick+ badge disappears.

Kia President and CEO SeungKyu (Sean) Yoon tied the result directly to how the Telluride was engineered. “The Telluride has become one of the most defining vehicles for the Kia brand, with safety fundamental to its success,” Yoon said. “Achieving this important IIHS designation reinforces the importance we placed on safety throughout its development, while delivering the design, capability and innovation our customers expect from the Telluride.”

A Second-Generation SUV With a Hybrid Option

This is the second generation of the Telluride, and Kia used the redesign to grow the SUV’s footprint, opening up more interior room, a roomier third row, and additional cargo space. The bigger news for buyers watching fuel bills: a turbo-hybrid powertrain joins the lineup for the first time, producing a combined 329 horsepower and 339 lb-ft of torque. On the EX FWD trim, the hybrid returns an EPA-estimated 35 mpg combined, a sharp jump over what a three-row SUV this size has typically managed on gasoline alone.

The safety hardware backs up the IIHS score on paper. Kia built the new Telluride on a stiffer body structure and packed in 10 standard airbags, including a front-row center airbag that deploys between the driver and front passenger to limit head contact in side impacts. The second row gets illuminated seatbelt buckles, a small but useful touch for parents buckling in kids at night, while the third row adds seatbelt pre-tensioners. On the driver-assistance side, the Telluride now offers Hands on Detection, a second-generation Lane Following Assist system, an in-cabin camera, and Parking Distance Warning on both the front and rear of the vehicle.

Where the Telluride Sits in a Crowded Segment

Three-row midsize SUVs are one of the most competitive corners of the new car market, with the Honda Pilot, Toyota Grand Highlander, Chevrolet Traverse, and Kia’s own corporate cousin, the Hyundai Palisade, all fighting for the same family buyers. A Top Safety Pick+ rating gives the Telluride a concrete data point to lean on in that fight, especially for buyers who cross-shop safety scores before they ever sit in a vehicle. The hybrid powertrain option also gives Kia dealers an answer for shoppers who want three-row space without the fuel costs that typically come with it.

None of this replaces a test drive, and the TSP+ badge covers crash protection and avoidance rather than every safety-adjacent feature a buyer might care about. But for a segment where families are making a purchase that will carry car seats, teenagers learning to drive, and long road trips for the better part of a decade, an independent lab’s highest rating is the kind of detail that belongs on the shopping checklist rather than buried in a press release.

What This Means for Telluride Shoppers

Kia says the 2027 Telluride is already reaching dealers, with the rating applying specifically to models built after June 2026. Shoppers looking at a Telluride on a lot right now should confirm the build date before assuming the TSP+ rating applies to the exact vehicle in front of them. IIHS ratings are tied to specific production runs rather than a model year as a whole, and a Telluride built before June 2026 could carry an older structure that was never submitted for the 2026 tests. Dealers can pull the build date from the vehicle’s window sticker or door jamb, and it takes a phone call to confirm before a purchase rather than an assumption made at the point of sale.

IIHS also draws a line between its two award tiers that buyers sometimes miss. Top Safety Pick, without the plus sign, requires good crash test scores but allows a lower-tier front crash prevention rating. Top Safety Pick+ demands the full slate: good ratings across every crash test plus a front crash prevention system that hits the top marks in both the pedestrian and vehicle-to-vehicle evaluations. Only five Kia models currently qualify for the plus rating out of a much larger lineup, a gap that gets lost when a headline simply says a car “won a safety award.” For buyers cross-shopping the segment on safety data alone, the Telluride now sits alongside a short list of three-row SUVs that have cleared IIHS’s toughest test yet.