As far as normal cars go, the 2025 Honda CR-V is a pretty good one. It’s comfortable, it’s spacious, it’s got a high-quality, sensible interior, it’s fuel efficient, and it’s surprisingly enjoyable to drive. So what would happen if Honda took its bread-and-butter crossover and seriously gave it some off-road capability? Could a rugged CR-V hold its own? Would it spoil what the car already does well? I’m asking—I don’t know, because that’s not what the 2026 Honda CR-V TrailSport really is.

The new trim adds a light, adventurous flair, a woodsy paint color, orange interior accents, and new wheels with all-terrain tires. The rubber is the only performance differentiator between the TrailSport and any other CR-V equipped with Honda’s two-motor hybrid powertrain. It doesn’t even have a lifted suspension.

This CR-V is still a very good car, like they all are. But if you hoped this version would be something more akin to the Trailsport Passport and Pilot, it’s best to leave those expectations behind now. Sure, these outdoorsy crossovers tend to trade on vibes rather than off-pavement prowess, but even compared to your Wildernesses and Woodlands, the CR-V TrailSport simply feels too ordinary.

The Basics

The TrailSport hovers around the middle of CR-V trims, above Sport, even with Sport-L, and below Sport Touring. It only comes in hybrid and all-wheel-drive form, and the execution here is identical to that of other hybrid CR-Vs: a traction motor and a power generator, joined by a 2.0-liter Atkinson-cycle four-cylinder, for a combined 204 horsepower and 247 lb-ft of torque. The EPA rates it for a very strong 40 mpg city, 34 highway, and 37 combined, and it starts at $40,045 including shipping.

The TrailSport’s exterior is distinguished by silver “skid garnish” on its front and rear bumpers, which are the same shape as those on other trims. (That’s a very deliberate word choice on Honda’s part—don’t mistake them for actual skid plates, like you get on the Passport TrailSport.) This CR-V also gets special badges front and rear, black trim and door handles, 18-inch Shark Gray wheels, and an available Ash Green Metallic exterior color carried over from the Passport. It looks nice, but I think it’s time the industry moved on from the weak pastel sage trend. We need some vivid greens on cars again.

Inside, the seats are all black and gray heather cloth with orange TrailSport logos embroidered into the headrests, plus orange stitching on the upholstery and steering wheel. What little ambient lighting there is in the CR-V interior—I only noticed it in the door handle slots and above the wireless phone charger—is also a matching amber. And you get rubber floor mats, again with the appropriate branding.

That’s basically it in terms of stylistic changes here. Those slate wheels are now shod in 235/60R18 Continental CrossContact ATR all-terrain tires, and if you’ve sported a few trails before, you probably already know that you can score a set of those for $1,000 on TireRack right now.

Driving the 2026 Honda CR-V TrailSport

Out in SoCal, Honda set up a small off-road obstacle course with steep ditches and hills that, at times, perched our humble soft-roaders on three tires. Frankly, it was nothing that an ordinary CR-V couldn’t have surmounted on its normal tires.

Fortunately, the all-terrain rubber hasn’t seemed to adversely impact the CR-V’s behavior on the street. Behind the wheel, the TrailSport may as well be any other CR-V Hybrid, blessed with a responsive chassis and a supremely fuel-efficient, albeit slightly interstate-challenged, powertrain.

You’ll definitely have some foot-to-the-floor passing moments in this car. And, when those happen, you’ll absolutely hear the pokey two-liter giving its all to meet the demand, bypassing the generator to send its power directly through to the wheels. Electric torque ensures there’s enough shove to get going from a stoplight, but at higher speeds, another 30 horsepower or so would certainly be appreciated.

As with every all-wheel-drive CR-V for 2026, the TrailSport receives improved traction control logic, so that it now works at very low speeds, below 9 mph. Hill descent control also comes on all trims and limits your pace when coasting down a sharp grade. Honda has made the 9-inch center touchscreen that used to be an upgrade standard across the range, and with it comes Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. There’s also a new available 10.2-inch digital instrument panel, which the TrailSport includes.

Conceptually, the CR-V’s interior is pretty unassailable. All the plastics feel solid to the touch, you get elegant, functional knobs and buttons to control heating and cooling, the infotainment display isn’t overwhelmingly huge, and the software behind the instrument cluster looks clean and is easy to follow.

I still love that long, wide grate motif spanning the climate vents, which Honda first debuted on the Civic. In this era of cynical minimalism at one end of the spectrum and aggressive, overwrought design on the other, it strikes a great balance, and it still draws the eye.

Spacious and sensible as this cabin is, my only complaint is that I’d expect the TrailSport to be a little better equipped for $40K. The truth is that it’s not far off the range-topping Sport Touring trim. That one throws in leather seats with memory power adjustability for the passenger, a better audio system, and a hands-free tailgate, among other nice-to-haves. The Pilot TrailSport’s 360-degree TrailWatch camera would be useful on a vehicle built for roads less traveled, but no CR-V offers such tech.

Value and Early Verdict

Many of the CR-V’s competitors—the Toyota RAV4, Subaru Forester, Nissan Rogue, Mazda CX-5, Hyundai Tucson, and Kia Sportage, just to name a bunch—offer aspirational and adventurous trim levels not unlike TrailSport. On some level, I can understand why they’re popular: Plenty of people want the outdoorsy look, but they don’t actually need the gear. That’s fair enough, and if it keeps someone who doesn’t really need a Jeep Wrangler from buying one, that alone is a great thing.

The TrailSport’s problem, though, is that even by those low standards, it’s still not special enough compared to any other CR-V. Forget about performance changes—it barely has visual ones. The Subaru Wilderness trio rides taller with aggressive bumpers and spill-resistant seats inside. The Nissan Rogue Rock Creek has a beefy roof rack. The new Toyota RAV4 Woodland has aftermarket-looking LED fog light strips, the kind that blind you. The Hyundai Tucson XRT doesn’t have a whole lot of unique touches, but it does give you a leather interior for around $4,000 less. The Forester Wilderness is a couple grand cheaper, too.

And that’s before you look at where Honda’s already taken the TrailSport name. On the Passport and Pilot, it actually means something—skid plates, special suspension tuning, optimized torque vectoring systems with an abundance of drive modes for different surface types, and so on. Plus, they just look good and offer far more exterior differentiation from the “normal” trims of those SUVs. The Passport TrailSport’s white steel-looking wheels just make me swoon.

The CR-V Hybrid was already an excellent and well-rounded crossover worth its price tag. We’ve even called it “The Final Boss of Family SUVs.” Fortunately, the TrailSport doesn’t compromise that. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t add anything to that recipe.

Quick Take

The Honda CR-V TrailSport amounts to an underwhelming cosmetic package for an otherwise great SUV, that doesn’t reflect the style or capability of Honda’s other TrailSport products.