WhatTire's 2026/27 Tire of the Year Awards, Checked Against Our Test Data

Dunlop's Blue Response TG takes the overall title

WhatTire has published its Tire of the Year awards for 2026/27, naming the Dunlop Blue Response TG both its overall Tire of the Year and its Summer Tire of the Year. Fourteen titles were awarded in total, covering summer, all season, winter, SUV, electric and value categories.

We always enjoy seeing these come out, and they weigh a couple of things we deliberately leave out of our own scoring: which carmakers have picked a tire as original equipment, and the environmental credentials of the company making it. So we thought the useful thing to add would be our own data. We have gone through all fourteen winners and lined them up against the test results we hold, ours and other publications' alike.

How the awards are put together

WhatTire's awards are built on what the site calls a Tirescore. By their own account it draws on EU tire label data, published results from third-party tests, original equipment fitments and manufacturers' environmental credentials, with an editorial panel then choosing winners from the resulting shortlist.

The 2026/27 winners in full

• Tire of the Year: Dunlop Blue Response TG
• Summer Tire of the Year: Dunlop Blue Response TG
• Supersports Tire of the Year: Bridgestone Potenza Sport Evo
• Performance Tire of the Year: Hankook Ventus Evo
• SUV Tire of the Year: Hankook iON evo SUV
• Summer Value Performer, 17 inch and above: Kumho Ecsta Sport PS72
• Summer Value Performer, 16 inch and below: Falken Ziex ZE320, listed by WhatTire as the Ziex 320
• All-Season Tire of the Year: Nokian Seasonproof 2
• All-Season SUV Tire of the Year: Continental AllSeasonContact 2
• All-Season Value Performer of the Year: GT Radial Climate Active
• Winter Performance Tire of the Year: Pirelli Scorpion Winter 2
• Winter Touring Tire of the Year: Kumho WinterCraft WP52+
• Eco Tire of the Year: Continental UltraContact NXT
• Electric Car Tire of the Year: Hankook iON evo

Where their picks and our test data agree

Six of the fourteen winners are tires we have run ourselves, and the agreement is good.

• The Nokian Seasonproof 2 is the clearest match. It won our Best SUV All Season Tires for 2025 outright, first of nine, so their All-Season Tire of the Year is a tire we also rate top of its class.
• The Continental AllSeasonContact 2, their All-Season SUV winner, finished second of eleven in The Best All Season Tires for 2025/26, having won our 2024 all season test the year before. Consistently at the sharp end in our data too.
• The Bridgestone Potenza Sport Evo, their Supersports winner, came second of eight and was Highly Recommended in The BEST Performance Summer Tires for 2026.
• The Hankook Ventus Evo, their Performance winner, finished third of thirteen and was Highly Recommended in The BEST Summer Tires for 2026.
• The Kumho Ecsta Sport PS72, their Summer Value Performer for larger sizes, was fourth of thirteen in that same 2026 summer test, and Recommended. A strong result for a mid-range tire, and exactly what a value award should be pointing at.
• The Falken Ziex ZE320, their Summer Value Performer for smaller sizes, took third of seven and was Highly Recommended in The Best Touring Tires for 2025. One thing worth knowing if you are shopping for one: it has the widest spread of results of any tire here. It also won the 2026 Auto Express summer test and a 2025 touring test outright, yet came thirteenth of fourteen in a 2025 combined summer and all season test. Budget tires vary between sizes more than premium ones do, so that is less a mark against the award than a reminder to check the specific size you are buying.

Where their shortlist overlaps with our measurements we would happily stand behind every one of those picks.

Where our data sees it a little differently

There is one winner where our numbers point somewhere else, and we mention it in the spirit of adding information rather than scoring points.

The Pirelli Scorpion Winter 2 is their Winter Performance Tire of the Year. In our 2023 Tire Reviews SUV Winter Tire Test it finished sixth of nine. It was Recommended, and it is a perfectly good winter tire, but that is a fair way off a class win.

Our test is three winters old, so on its own we would not make much of it. What makes it worth raising is that the other winter SUV tests we hold land in a similar place:

• Third of eleven in Auto Bild Allrad's 2023 SUV winter test, its strongest result
• Fifth of seven in a 2023 SUV winter test
• Fourth of ten in a 2024 SUV winter test
• Fourth of thirteen in Auto Bild Sportscars' 2025 SUV winter test, graded Good

Across five tests from four publishers it consistently sits just behind the leaders. That is a good tire by any measure, and the Scorpion Winter 2 does well on the label right across the range, which is the sort of thing their method picks up and a single test in a single size cannot. Both readings are defensible; ours just puts it a few places lower.

Six winners we have not tested ourselves

Six of the fourteen winners have never appeared in a Tire Reviews test, and that includes the headline award. That does not leave us with nothing to say, though: we hold results from other publications' tests for every one of them, and those verdicts now appear on our tire pages alongside our own.

On that evidence, the picks stand up well.

• The Dunlop Blue Response TG, their overall Tire of the Year, won Sport Auto's 2026 eco summer test outright, first of eight, with the magazine's top grade. We have not run it ourselves, but their headline pick is a well supported one.
• The Hankook iON evo, their Electric Car winner, took first of eight in Auto Bild's 2025 EV test and first of ten in a 2026 Autozurnal eco test.
• The Continental UltraContact NXT, their Eco winner, won a 2025 sustainability test first of six and a 2025 low rolling resistance test first of seven.
• The Kumho WinterCraft WP52+, Winter Touring winner, was third of twenty-two in Auto Bild's 2025 winter test, rated Exemplary. A strong result in a very large field.
• The Hankook iON evo SUV, SUV Tire of the Year, was second of nine in a 2024 EV test.

The one we would add a caveat to

That leaves the GT Radial Climate Active, their All-Season Value Performer, where the test results we hold are more mixed:

• Eighth of sixteen in the ADAC 2026 all season test
• Sixth of thirteen in Auto Bild Allrad's 2025 SUV all season test, graded Good
• Eighth of thirty-seven, and ninth of seventeen, in Auto Bild's 2024 all season testing

Four mid-pack finishes from three publishers. In fairness, a value award is a judgement about what you get for the money rather than a claim that a tire is the fastest thing in the class, and the Climate Active is a lot cheaper than most of what finished ahead of it, so the case for it is really a price one. We would just suggest reading it that way rather than as an all-round recommendation.

Our view

Twelve of the fourteen picks are backed by measurements somebody actually took, whether ours or another publication's. That is a strong hit rate for a method built on published evidence, and it says the panel is reading that evidence well.

The two where we would add something, the Scorpion Winter 2 and the Climate Active, are interesting for the same reason: both look stronger across a whole range of sizes and on price than they do in any individual test. That is genuinely useful information, and it is information our own testing does not capture. It just answers a slightly different question from the one a track test answers.

Which is really the point. These awards and our tests are complementary rather than competing, and the sensible thing is to use both. Where a tire has been tested, read the test, and we now show other publications' verdicts on our tire pages to make that easier. Where it has not, a well researched award is a genuinely good guide, and this is a well researched set. Congratulations to the winners, and to the WhatTire team for the work that goes into putting them together.