It’s now officially official: The U.S. is getting the 2026 Honda Prelude. While the news isn’t a surprise, it had only been strongly hinted at up to today, when Honda confirmed as much. The hybrid two-door Honda coupe will arrive on our shores later in 2025 and will do its best to keep up the performance end suggested by its appearance despite its humble-origins hybrid system shared with the Civic, Accord, and others.
Key to this performance feel will be the use of a seemingly Prelude-exclusive (for now) Linear Shift Control, which Honda says will give the coupe “the feel of a conventional drivetrain shifting gears” at wide open throttle. While this sounds utterly banal, it’s actually big news given the way Honda’s current hybrid setup works: There is no conventional type of transmission between the drive wheels and the engine, certainly not one that can be “shifted” from gear to gear in the traditional sense. Instead, a large electric motor does most of the motivation, while the gas engine feeds power to it via a smaller motor-generator unit; the engine can be clutched into a single-speed direct-drive gearbox to help assist the drive wheels in certain scenarios where it’s deemed more efficient to do so. Thus any “shifting” would be entirely faux, much like the simulated rev dips in the Honda Civic and Accord Hybrid models; it’s not yet clear whether Linear Shift Control differs from that programming in any way, though it could by handing over control over those “shift” points to the driver. This also confirms our suspicion that Honda wouldn’t be able to release a true manual or even a DCT version of the Prelude while using its hybrid powertrain.
This “Linear Shift Control” will be joined by a new driving mode called “S Plus Shift,” stylized as “S+ Shift.” Again, according to Honda, this will improve the feel of the 2026 Prelude by maximizing “the efficiency of a high-performance engine and high-output motor, finely controlling engine RPM across all acceleration and deceleration ranges based on driving conditions.” This aggressive feeling is matched to an active sound controller for “powerful auditory feedback” and “responsive meter that engage the senses.”
Honda clued us in to this system during the Honda 0 prototype drives back in October, but at the time it said to expect this auditory system to be released on all-electric Hondas by 2028. It seems like Honda has created a version that can be applied right now to the 2026 Prelude, and we expect a version dedicated to full electrics in the coming years.
