Recall · 26V545000
Kia America recalled the KIA EV9 over air bags
21,290
Vehicles covered
1
Model
2
Model years
August 21, 2026
Filed with NHTSA
AIR BAGS:SENSOR:OCCUPANT CLASSIFICATION:FRONT PASSENGER
- The defect
- Kia America, Inc (Kia) is recalling certain 2025-2026 EV9 vehicles. Due to improper routing, the Occupant Detection System (ODS) may not deactivate the air bag when a child or child seat is in the front passenger seat. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 208, "Occupant Crash Protection."
- What it can cause
- A child in the front seat may be at a greater risk of injury if the air bag deploys during a crash.
- What the dealer does
- Dealers will inspect and replace the ODS mat and bladder tube with a new one and ensure proper routing as necessary, free of charge. Owner notification letters will be mailed beginning October 20, 2026. Owners may contact Kia Customer Service at 1-800-333-4542. Kia's number for this recall is SC379. Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs) involved in this recall will become searchable on NHTSA.gov on September 4, 2026.
The repair is free, whatever the age or mileage of the vehicle, and whether or not you are the original owner.
Which vehicles
A recall reaches a range of VINs inside these model years, not every car built in them. Yours may not be covered even if it is listed here, and the only way to find out is NHTSA's own VIN lookup .
How this campaign compares
At 21,290 vehicles this is a bigger campaign than 84% of the 19,818 vehicle recalls filed since 1995 whose size NHTSA published. The middle campaign on file covers 472. It covers model years 2025 to 2026, so the oldest vehicles on it were one model year old when the defect was reported to NHTSA.
Kia vehicles have been recalled over the air bags 16 times before this, most recently in December 2023 as 23V830000. That is not evidence the earlier repair failed.
This site holds the complaint record for all 2 model years the campaign names. Their owners have filed 40 complaints with NHTSA, 33 of them before this campaign was filed. The earliest of them reached NHTSA in January 2025, 1 year before this filing.
The vehicles on this campaign carry 4 other recalls published here: 26V046000 (electrical system), 25V115000 (electrical system), 24V962000 (seats), 24V757000 (electrical system).
Check your own car
A VIN check is the only answer for a specific vehicle, and it also shows every other open recall on it, which is usually the reason it is worth doing rather than reading one campaign.
Filed by Kia America, Inc. with NHTSA on August 21, 2026 as campaign 26V545000. Every word of the defect, consequence and remedy above is NHTSA's published record of that filing, not a summary of it.
Compiled and maintained by guarledes . Data last checked 2026-08-21.
Independent developer and analyst