The 2027 Kia Telluride has earned a Top Safety Pick+ award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the group’s highest designation, with one condition attached: the award applies only to Tellurides built after June 2026. Earlier examples of the same three-row SUV came with headlights the institute rated marginal, and that single component is the difference between a qualifying vehicle and one that is not.
IIHS announced the award on September 3, 2026, alongside a second winner, the 2026-27 Tesla Model Y. The announcement brings the institute’s 2026 award list to 70 vehicles, according to Canadian outlet Empty Tank’s summary. For a shopper on a dealer lot, the practical question is which Telluride is in front of them.
The build-date condition
The IIHS announcement is direct about it: “Only vehicles built after June 2026 qualify for an award. These models come with good-rated headlights, while those built earlier were equipped with marginal ones.” The Telluride’s ratings page repeats the restriction and lists headlights as varying by build date, good for vehicles built after June 2026 and marginal for earlier ones.
Headlights matter because IIHS treats them as a required part of the award. Under the institute’s 2026 criteria, a vehicle needs acceptable or good headlights as standard equipment, and the announcement states the requirement as acceptable- or good-rated headlights across all trim levels. The Telluride change shows how a mid-year hardware revision can move a vehicle across that line without any change to its crash structure.
The same overview page warns that build dates apply to other winners too, citing the Genesis Palisade, which qualifies only when built after November 2025, and tells buyers to check the manufacture date of the specific vehicle. IIHS does not extend the award retroactively to earlier Tellurides, so a used or leftover 2027 model built before the cutoff does not carry it.
Crash tests the Telluride had to pass
The institute runs two award levels. The IIHS overview page says the standard Top Safety Pick has less stringent requirements and leaves out the vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention requirement, which the plus level adds. That makes the Telluride’s result more than a pass on crash tests alone: its automatic braking has to avoid collisions in the institute’s scenarios, and the standard Forward Collision-Avoidance Assist system did so across all of them, according to the ratings page.
To earn the plus level, a vehicle must score good in the small overlap front, moderate overlap front and side tests, carry acceptable or good headlights, and post a good pedestrian front crash prevention rating along with an acceptable or good vehicle-to-vehicle rating. IIHS lists the Telluride at good in every one of those categories, with headlights counted only for post-June builds. Its rating page adds a good for seat belt reminders and a good-plus for child seat anchors, with four full LATCH positions and one tether-only position.
The page notes that the Telluride shares several ratings with the 2026 Hyundai Palisade, since both were redesigned on related underpinnings. For the Telluride, the ratings page shows the headlight line as the single entry that changes with the production date, while the crash tests and both crash-prevention evaluations apply to every 2027 build.
The Model Y and the models that missed
The Tesla joins the Telluride with good ratings in the same six categories. IIHS says the Model Y “was redesigned for model year 2026” and “makes the cut thanks to good ratings across the board,” and its ratings apply to 2026-27 models. The Model Y page also shows a marginal rating for seat belt reminders, because the alert lasts only 8 to 89 seconds for an unbuckled occupant, and an acceptable rating for child seat anchors. On headlights, the page says every trim has LED projectors with high-beam assist, though the Base trim showed some glare in certain tests and the Model Y still earned a good overall headlight rating. Neither counts against the award under current criteria, a point ConsumerAffairs also makes.
Five other recently tested models did not win: the BMW 3 Series, BMW i4, GMC Canyon crew cab, Lexus IS and Toyota Crown Signia. ConsumerAffairs says the Toyota came closest, with good ratings for side crash protection, headlights and both crash-prevention systems, but a marginal moderate-overlap rating kept it out. Empty Tank counts 17 vehicles at Top Safety Pick and 53 at Top Safety Pick+ in the full 2026 list, and only Tellurides built after June 2026 are among the 53.
The end result is a two-tier Telluride model year. A 2027 model built in or before June 2026 has the marginal headlights and no award, and one built afterward has the good-rated lights and the Top Safety Pick+. IIHS’s own release does not put a number on how many of each are on dealer lots, so the size of the group that misses out is unknown.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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