By William Byrd
I know sometimes it feels like us journalists are coming up with wacky things to do with our press loaners. Well, I drove the 2026 Hyundai Palisade XRT Pro to my wedding! Four kids, their assorted stuff, along with the chaos of getting everyone somewhere important on time. The XRT Pro adds a little rugged attitude to the mission. Whether that’s worth the price premium over the rest of the lineup is a fair question. Let’s talk about it.
2026 Hyundai Palisade Overview
The 2026 Palisade is a complete, ground-up redesign. It’s longer, wider, and more feature-dense than its predecessor. The lineup spans seven trims and two powertrain options, which is a lot of ground to cover, so here’s the relevant info.
SE — $39,435. The Palisade’s entry point. A 12.3-inch dual-screen setup, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, eight-passenger seating, and Hyundai’s full SmartSense safety suite standard. FWD comes standard, with AWD available.
SEL — $41,940. Adds heated front seats, leatherette seating, dual-zone climate control, and a power driver’s seat. It’s the first trim offering a seven-passenger captain’s chair layout as an option. Likely the sensible family-hauler sweet spot for most buyers.
SEL Convenience — $43,370. Builds a bit on the SEL with a hands-free smart liftgate, wireless device charging, and additional convenience features.
SEL Premium — $45,300. Ventilated front and second-row seats, a panoramic sunroof, a 14-speaker Bose audio system, and a 360-degree camera. One of the better value propositions in the lineup for buyers who are looking for a specific level of comfort.
Limited — $49,770. Real leather upholstery, ventilated front seats, a dual-pane panoramic sunroof, and power-reclining third-row seats.
XRT Pro — $49,870. The car we’re driving here. It’s the first time Hyundai has offered off-road hardware on the Palisade, vs. just an appearance package. AWD is standard and the only one available. You get 8.4 inches of ground clearance (an inch more than standard trims), all-terrain Continental tires, an electronic rear limited-slip differential, red recovery hooks front and rear, mud/sand/snow terrain modes, hill descent control, and a rugged exterior treatment with black accents and unique 18-inch wheels.
Calligraphy — $54,560. The Nappa leather-covered flagship, which also gets massaging relaxation seats, a head-up display, 21-inch wheels, and a built-in dual-camera dash cam.
2026 Hyundai Palisade XRT PRO: Inside & Out
The new Palisade wears a boxier, more purposeful stance than its predecessor. On the XRT Pro, the black exterior accents, blacked-out grille, all-terrain tires, and red recovery hooks give a good adventure-ready, or at least adventure-adjacent, look. The overall impression is a sporty SUV that doesn’t look overdone. That balance is harder to achieve than it sounds, and the Palisade XRT Pro gets it right.
First impressions from the curb: I liked it immediately. There’s a little spoiler element above the tailgate that adds a touch of personality. The proportions are right for a three-row vehicle of this footprint.
The 2026 Palisade’s interior also got a full redesign. The dual 12.3-inch curved panoramic displays, one for the instrument cluster and one for infotainment, are crisp, well-organized, and strike the right balance between ambition and usability. It doesn’t feel screen-dominant. It feels deliberate. Physical buttons handle the functions you reach for reflexively. Audio and climate controls respond with satisfying clicks.
The main screen itself is angled slightly toward the driver, which does two things: it makes the interface easier to read at a glance, and it makes the whole arrangement look less like a tablet bolted to the dashboard. The far right edge of the screen requires a slight reach. Not bad, just worth knowing. A small detail that I thought was fun: the audio fades out gradually rather than cutting abruptly when you switch the car off.
Wireless CarPlay connected immediately on the first attempt and took over the full screen cleanly. The wireless phone charger location is the best I’ve encountered in a press car. It’s positioned and sized to make it both easy to place and easy to retrieve, without the awkward reaching that plagues most implementations. If your phone runs hot on wireless charging (mine does), the surface adjacent to the charger is also a natural spot to set it temporarily.
The Bose 14-speaker audio system on this trim is excellent. I pushed it hard during the wedding drive, and it held up with the enthusiasm the occasion deserved.
The center console area provided a genuinely useful flat surface for school-morning drop-off, the kind of improvised breakfast tray parents appreciate. There’s a nicely sized storage bin below the console, accessible from the second row, sized right for a purse or bag. The door pockets for drinks come in varied sizes, which sounds like a minor detail, but just works.
The third row felt better than most three-row SUVs at this price. Not exceptional, but genuinely usable for shorter adults and fine for kids. Cargo behind the third row is 19.1 cubic feet, expanding to 46.3 cubic feet with the third row folded. A hockey bag required folding half of the second row, which is generally to be expected for a bag of that size. Though I’ll note that the bag in question smelled catastrophic, and I recommend against bringing it in any enclosed vehicle, Palisade or otherwise.
2026 Hyundai Palisade XRT PRO: On the Road
Out on the road, the Palisade XRT Pro feels a little pokey. Not unusably slow, the 3.5-liter V6’s 287 horsepower is more than adequate for highway merging and most real-world situations. The XRT Pro tips the scales at over 4,700 pounds, and the transmission is a bit behind when you want power immediately. The revs build, the shifts sort themselves out, and eventually momentum arrives. If you’re coming from a lighter turbocharged four-cylinder or a sportier V6, the Palisade’s throttle response will require recalibrating your expectations.
The ride quality, however, is excellent. Despite the beefier tires, the Palisade sort of glides over road surfaces. Comfortable seats, good isolation, and relaxed highway manners also helped on our trek to the wedding destination three hours away from home. As usual, I love that the dash tells you which wiper setting is currently active. A small display indicator, easy to miss, but genuinely useful on a drive where conditions change. It helped on our occasionally rainy drive.
The hands-free foot-activated liftgate worked pretty well. Loading the car after the wedding with heavy items in both hands, a kick under the bumper popped the liftgate reliably most of the time. Not every time, but it was a reasonable result for a convenience feature being used under imperfect conditions.
The keyless door handle sensors were intermittent at best. When you’re in a hurry, which, at a wedding with four kids, you frequently are, an unlatch sensor that makes you try twice is the kind of small friction that accumulates over a week. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it should work every time.
The driver attention monitoring system was very active on the highway, and during sustained highway driving on a windy day, it repeatedly suggested taking a break. The wind was pushing the car around enough that the system interpreted the corrective steering inputs as fatigue indicators. The alerts become distracting. This is a common issue with these systems across the segment, but it’s worth mentioning because it annoyed me on our drive.
Summary
The 2026 Hyundai Palisade XRT Pro is a great vehicle for a specific kind of buyer. Someone who needs real three-row capacity, but wants a beefier-looking, AWD hardware-capable SUV that can handle light trails and bad weather confidently. The interior is excellent. The comfort and space are class-competitive. The audio system is genuinely good. The tech is thoughtfully executed in most places.
What I can tell you is that it hauled four kids and their gear to a wedding without drama, loaded up afterward with minimal complaint, and did the job it was designed to do. For a family SUV, that’s the whole test.
2026 Hyundai Palisade XRT Pro Base MSRP: $51,470 | Engine: 3.5L V6 | Output: 287 hp / 260 lb-ft | Transmission: 8-speed automatic | Drivetrain: HTRAC AWD (standard) | Ground Clearance: 8.4 in | Cargo: 19.1 cu ft (3rd row up) / 46.3 cu ft (2nd row folded) | Fuel Economy: 16/22/19 mpg (city/highway/combined)
Jeff Glucker 
Kamil Kaluski