Does The 2026 Kia Sportage Have A Head-Up Display? Yes, But There's A Catch

Once the product of a small and emerging brand, the Kia Sportage is now a familiar name on North American roads, and has been doing the rounds since the mid-1990s. Now in its fifth generation, the Sportage has carved out a reputation for offering sharp styling, good value, and a feature set that often punches above its weight, competing with and often outshining many American and Japanese models. With a refreshed version arriving for the 2026 model year, Kia isn't overhauling the formula, but it is tightening things up with more tech, and a slight exterior refresh.

Among the equipment making its way into the 2026 Sportage is a suite of creature comforts designed to appeal to tech-savvy buyers, such as a newly available 10-inch heads-up display, or HUD. For the uninitiated, a HUD projects key information like speed, navigation prompts, and safety alerts onto the windshield, which enables drivers to keep their focus on the road and their hands on the wheel.

There is, however, a bit of fine print. While the 2026 Sportage does indeed offer a HUD, it's only available for shoppers looking at the hybrid or plug-in hybrid versions, and even then, only in the top-of-the-line Prestige trims.

If a HUD is an absolute must-have for you, then you may as well ignore the advertised starting price for the Kia Sportage, which sits at $30,095 for the non-hybrid model, or $31,735 for the hybrid, including destination fees. We've looked through Kia's online configurator, and could not see the option to include the 10-inch HUD on lower trims or ICE models, and so splashing out for the Sportage Hybrid SX Prestige is the cheapest way of netting this trick upgrade.

That will set you back $41,835, around $10,000 more than the cheapest hybrid, and over $11,000 more than the base gas Sportage. Sure, the SX Prestige also comes loaded with a bunch of other neat features, such as a panoramic sunroof, 12.3-inch dual panoramic displays, and a Harmon Kardon premium sound system, but it's still a huge extra expense which might be tricky for some to justify.

For some, an entry or lower-level Sportage will make more sense. All trims come with the same capable powertrain, with a combined 232 horsepower and 195 lb-ft of torque at its disposal. SlashGear were fortunate enough to pilot a Sportage Hybrid around Kentuckiana earlier in 2025, and found it to be efficient, spacious, and impressively well-equipped.

If the HUD is the only upgrade above lower trims that you're keen on getting, then no, forking out thousands of extra dollars for the SX Prestige isn't really a great decision. However, if the 19-inch machine-finish alloy wheels and other trick gadgets do appeal, then yes, spending the extra cash and getting a Sportage Hybrid with the HUD is a good idea.

The HUD itself supports both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration, in addition to turn-by-turn directions. It's intelligent too, and boasts the ability to collect traffic information and then place it directly where you need it, rather than hiding key updates on the driver's display or central screen, out of your eye-line. These could include incident reports, or indications of building congestion.

Other simpler highlights include your current speed, the speed limit of the road you're currently travelling on, and blind-spot information too. In short, the HUD doesn't revolutionize the experience, and it doesn't necessarily add anything new. It does, however, add an extra layer of convenience, by placing all of that helpful information right where you need it, and this undoubtedly will help to improve concentration on the road too. 

It's not just Kia that is introducing HUD tech into more attainable models now. In addition to the newly revised Sportage, various Honda models offer head-up displays too, as do some Toyotas, Fords, and many more mainstream brands.