2025 Kia Telluride Recall: Front Seat Back Frames May Fail

The front seatbacks in 85,515 2025 Kia Telluride SUVs ride on recliners that Kia's supplier may have built incorrectly, and in certain rear-impact crashes a seatback with a faulty recliner may fail to restrain the person in it. NHTSA campaign 26V105 covers 2025 Tellurides with one or two power front seats built from November 1, 2024 through August 8, 2025.

Dealers inspect each power seatback under load and replace the seat back frame assembly on any seat that moves. The work is free, and Kia's number for the campaign is SC362.

The Issue

The recliner is the hinge at the bottom of each front seatback, where the backrest meets the cushion. On a power seat, a motor drives it to set the backrest angle, and the recliner then locks that angle. In a rear-end collision the occupant is thrown back into the seatback, and the recliner carries that load.

Kia's Part 573 report gives the cause as an improperly manufactured front seatback recliner from Tier 2 supplier DAS North America of Montgomery, Alabama. The recalled components are the left and right seat back frame assemblies, part numbers 88310-S9500, 88310-S9510 and 88310-S9520 for the driver and 88410-S9500 and 88410-S9510 for the passenger. Each replacement frame assembly contains a correctly made recliner.

With the seat at its lowest and rearmost setting and the backrest reclined to line up with the top of the center console, a technician in the second row presses a seat back push tool against the stitching marks on both sides of the backrest at 60 kilograms-force, about 132 pounds, then checks the seatback by hand for play at its base. A seat that shifts gets a new frame assembly, and every other part of the old seat moves over to it along with fresh airbag screws, lumbar clips and guides from the kit.

Affected Models

Vehicle	Model Year	Build Dates	Estimated Units
Kia Telluride with power front seat(s)	2025	Nov 1, 2024 to Aug 8, 2025	85,515

Tellurides built from August 9, 2025 have the corrected recliner, according to Kia's filing. On a Telluride with power adjustment on the driver's side alone, dealers inspect that one seat. The recalled vehicles are scattered through the VIN sequence, so a VIN lookup or a call to a dealer settles whether a specific Telluride is included.

Chronology and Investigation

On August 7, 2025, Kia Georgia told Kia North America's Safety Office about a possible looseness in driver seatbacks, and the Safety Office began collecting warranty-return parts. August 8 was the last build date in the recalled population.

In the first half of October 2025 the supplier tested parts built to replicate the condition and found that they met the applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. Kia kept gathering seatbacks, and between October 23, 2025 and January 26, 2026, Kia Georgia shipped them to Kia Corporation headquarters for rear-impact sled tests. The tested parts fell short of Kia's internal performance standard, and the recall rests on that result; the Part 573 report names no federal safety standard.

Kia, the Georgia plant and the supplier reviewed production records from February 2 to February 13, 2026, and confirmed the cause. The Safety Office decided to recall on February 13. Kia dated its Part 573 report February 23 and issued a new-vehicle delivery hold to dealers on February 24.

On April 24, 2026, Kia Georgia reported that 67 Kia employee lease vehicles had been left out of the population through human error. Kia's amended report adds them, raising the count from 85,448 to 85,515.

Reported Incidents

Kia found 76 unique VINs with a loose front seatback potentially related to the recliner defect, in field reports received from February 25, 2025 through February 2, 2026. Its chronology lists no accidents, injuries or fatalities. Kia estimates that 1% of the recalled vehicles carry the defect, which works out to roughly 855 Tellurides.

What Owners Should Do

The VIN lookup on NHTSA.gov has been live since March 9, 2026, and Kia mailed owner letters from April 24 through May 28, 2026. By its October 14, 2026 quarterly report, Kia counted 51,761 of the 85,515 vehicles as remedied, inspected without needing a part, or returned to inventory. It listed 1,493 owners as unreachable by mail, so anyone who bought a 2025 Telluride secondhand should run the VIN.

Call a Kia dealer or Kia Customer Care at 1-800-333-4542 and reference recall SC362. Owners who already paid for a seatback repair can request reimbursement at customercare.kiausa.com or by mailing the form included with the owner letter.

If a front seatback comes loose while you are driving, Kia's owner letter says to pull over somewhere safe and call Kia Roadside Assistance at 1-800-333-4542 to have the Telluride towed to the nearest Kia dealer.

Symptoms to Watch For Before the Seatback Fails

A front seatback that feels loose. Looseness heads the warnings in Kia's report, and the owner letter says it can appear while driving.

Grinding when the backrest reclines. The report also names a grinding noise as the power recline moves the seatback.

Side-to-side play at the base of the backrest. Dealers grip the seatback from the second row and push one side while pulling the other, three times, feeling for excess left-to-right movement near the recliner.

How Long Will the Recall Repair Take?

Kia's owner letter puts the visit at one to two hours, longer if the inspection finds a bad seat. The warranty labor times in the remedy instructions run 0.3 hour to inspect both power seats with no fault, 0.2 hour for a driver-only power seat, 1.0 hour to inspect and replace one seatback frame, and 1.7 hours when both need frames.

At Kia's 1% defect estimate, most visits end after the inspection. The push tool was auto-shipped to dealers, and Kia lists a seat back assembly kit for each side, with a different driver kit for seats with the Integrated Memory System.

Bottom Line

Kia estimates the defect touches about 1% of the recalled Tellurides and reports no crashes or injuries, and the recliner does its work in a rear-end collision, when an owner can do nothing about it. A seat that passes is through inspection in well under an hour.

Run the VIN at NHTSA.gov, book the SC362 inspection, and treat a front seatback that comes loose as a reason to stop driving and call for a tow.

Find your Kia Telluride recall information: https://www.kia.com/us/en/recall

Recall 26V105 (February 2026) covers 2025 Tellurides with power front seats built November 1, 2024 through August 8, 2025, whose seatback recliners from supplier DAS North America were improperly manufactured. An amended report added 67 employee lease vehicles, bringing the count to 85,515. Dealers load-test each power seatback and replace the frame assembly on seats that move.

This is the second seat-related Telluride recall of 2026. Recall 26V430 (July 2026) covers power-seat motor fires on 2020-2024 models; 26V105 covers seatback recliners on 2025 models with power front seats.