One hundred IIHS Top Safety Pick awards. Mazda got there without a luxury sub-brand doing any of the lifting.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety awarded the 2026 CX-5 its TOP SAFETY PICK+ designation on July 9, pushing Mazda’s cumulative total to 100 IIHS Top Safety Pick awards since the program launched in 2008. Seventy-four of those carry the plus designation, the higher tier. The CX-5 award is also Mazda’s ninth 2026 TOP SAFETY PICK+ recognition, extending the brand’s lead over every other automaker in that category for the third consecutive year.
That cumulative number matters more than it might look at first glance. Only Toyota and Hyundai have also crossed the 100-award threshold in the program’s history. Both got there with sub-brand volume counted in: Toyota’s tally includes Lexus, and Hyundai’s includes Genesis and Kia. Mazda’s 100 belong entirely to Mazda.
The 2026 CX-5 joins eight other models already holding TOP SAFETY PICK+ for the year: the Mazda3 Sedan, Mazda3 Hatchback, CX-30, CX-50 (including the CX-50 Hybrid), CX-70, CX-70 PHEV, CX-90, and CX-90 PHEV. That’s the full passenger lineup, essentially, rated to the IIHS’s highest standard. For context, the Toyota RAV4, one of the CX-5’s most direct competitors in the compact SUV segment, does not hold the TOP SAFETY PICK+ award for 2026.
To earn TOP SAFETY PICK+, a vehicle needs good ratings in the small overlap front, moderate overlap front, and side crash tests. Headlights must earn acceptable or better ratings across all trim levels, a requirement that has tripped up numerous models in recent years as IIHS has tightened its lighting evaluation criteria. Front crash prevention systems must also earn a good rating in the pedestrian test and an acceptable or better rating in the vehicle-to-vehicle 2.0 test. Any optional front crash prevention systems offered on the vehicle must meet those same thresholds. The headlight and optional-system requirements are where most manufacturers stumble, because a single underperforming trim or optional safety package can cost an otherwise strong vehicle the award entirely. Mazda’s nine-model sweep means every trim configuration across the lineup cleared those bars.
Mazda’s approach to that engineering consistency has been a long-running focus on what the brand calls human-centric design, keeping the driver’s physical and perceptual position relative to the road as a primary variable in safety architecture rather than treating crash ratings as an independent optimization target. Whether that philosophy deserves more credit than rigorous supplier management and testing cycles is a debate for engineers. The results, across 18 years of IIHS evaluations, are difficult to argue with.
The CX-5 specifically has been the backbone of Mazda’s North American volume for over a decade, which gives this particular award added weight. It is not a halo model engineered to win trophies at low volume. It is the model that moves in meaningful numbers, and it is now also the model that pushed the cumulative total to 100.
Three brands, 100 or more IIHS Top Safety Picks. One of them got there on its own. That is the number Mazda will be citing for a while.
Source: Mazda. Images courtesy of Mazda.
