Land Rover Defender Plays It Safe With 2026 Facelift
Believe it or not, it’s already been over half a decade since the new Land Rover Defender arrived, causing much teeth-gnashing fury among devotees of the original car, but otherwise thoughtfully and successfully updating an iconic name for the modern world.
Since then, it’s been an enormous success for Land Rover, selling in its hundreds of thousands and doubtless being a big contributor to JLR’s best-in-a-decade profit last year. Now that it’s time for it to get a round of updates, then, Land Rover has rather sensibly played things safe. Ready for a game of spot the difference?
For the 2026 model year, the Defender gets very lightly reworked headlights and new flush-fitting smoked tail lights. There’s also a new standard-fit gloss black grille bar, and the option of a new design of seven-spoke, 22-inch diamond-turned alloy.
A few new hues have been added to the colour range, too – Borasco Grey and Woolstone Green are new for the ‘regular’ range, while the high-performance OCTA, one of our favourite cars of 2025 so far, gains the choice of matt Sargasso Blue. There’s also a new matt Patagonia White protective film wrap available on the OCTA. Inside, there’s a new 13.1-inch infotainment screen, up from 11.4 inches in the old car, with the gear selector slightly repositioned to accommodate it. Earth-shattering stuff, we know.
There are a couple of changes brought in with off-roading in mind, though – off-road adaptive cruise control is now available, leaving the car to handle throttle and brake input over rough ground, while the 130 model now comes with the option of an integrated tyre air compressor.
That’s about it for the big changes – the Defender still comes in three-door 90, five-door 110 and five-door-but-longer 130 body styles, and there’s no mention of any changes to the powertrains.
Right now, they include two different flavours of 3.0-litre turbodiesel straight-sixes, a 2.0-litre four-cylinder plug-in hybrid, and what we think might be the only case of two entirely different petrol V8 engines being offered in a new car – the P425 variant is one of the last applications of JLR’s old 5.0-litre supercharged V8 with 419bhp, while the OCTA gets a 616bhp BMW 4.4-litre twin-turbo unit.
On sale now, UK pricing for the lightly reworked Defender kicks off at £57,135.
The first full sentence spoken by an infant Mike was a review of the ride quality of a Volvo 850. It was “Daddy’s car goes bumpy-bump on a bumpy road,” so would probably need proofreading a bit, but it was a start.
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