The new, facelifted Kia Sportage recently broke cover for the Korean Domestic Market, revealing what we can expect for the refreshed compact crossover when it arrives on our shores. Although likely a few months away from coming to our market, the updated Sportage gives us a preview of some of the changes Kia implemented to its popular compact crossover as it crests over the age of two years old.
The current, fifth generation Sportage arrived in 2021 as a 2022 model-year car in Korea, and a 2023 model-year car here in North America. So, because it’s still relatively young, the updated version isn’t likely to arrive for some time and will probably come stateside later in 2025 for a 2026 model-year, if we were to speculate. It’s not unusual for new or updated models to debut in their domestic home markets and thus, Korea getting an updated and facelifted Kia Sportage ahead of the rest of the world is no surprise to us.
Sporting Kia’s New Corporate Front End
As clued to us when Kia released a teaser of its updated Sportage, the newly refreshed model corroborates with what we expected from said teaser. As seen on some recent models, such as the all-new Forte-replacing K4 sedan, the updated K5, and the latest Carnival minivan, the new Sportage gains the company’s signature right-angular “falling” daytime-running LED light, as well as a completely new front-end design featuring new headlights, a new grille, and reshaped front fascia.
From there on backwards, the Sportage appears to remain largely the same, aside from subtle tweaks here and there to the car’s exterior trim bits, such as new taillights, a reworked rear bumper, and new wheel designs. But while the front end got most of the attention, it’s the interior that also received the most updates.
As we can see from the pictures on Kia’s South Korean page, the new Sportage’s interior takes heavy inspiration from the EV9’s overall interior aesthetic theme. This includes a new two-spoke horizontal steering wheel with flat tops and bottoms, some updated panels and trim bits, and a slightly redesigned dashboard.
The large, dual-screen information display array appears to also benefit from a design overhaul, featuring a more squared-off shape. But the important bits, the 12.3-inch screens, remain the same, but with a new graphical user interface. Also new in the updated Sportage is Kia’s latest twist-dial transmission selector, in place of the conventional one in the current model Sportage.
Being a very popular global model, the Sportage already comes with a wide variety of gasoline, diesel, gas-hybrid, and even LPG powertrains. In Korea, it’ll continue to be propelled by either a 1.6-liter turbocharged gasoline-four and a 2.0-liter LPG four-cylinder.
In North America, the gas-only Sportage comes solely with a 2.5-liter naturally-aspirated direct-injected four-cylinder with 187 hp and 178 lb-ft of torque, and a gas-electric hybrid and plug-in hybrid version. The standard hybrid variant punches out a total system output of 227 hp and 258 lb-ft of twist while the top-spec plug-in hybrid churns out a total of 261 hp and 258 torques.
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