Audi Q5, Audi Q5 Sportback, Audi Sq5, Audi Sq5 Sportback, model year 2025. Filed by Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. and reported to NHTSA on 24 April 2026. 7,425 vehicles potentially affected.
What the notice says Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (Audi) is recalling certain 2025 Q5, Q5 Sportback, SQ5, and SQ5 Sportback vehicles. The driver and front passenger seat belts may have been manufactured incorrectly, and fail to properly restrain occupants during a crash.
Is your vehicle included? Check with your VIN at NHTSA, or ask a dealer. This page is an independent copy of the notice, kept so you can see what changed after it was published. It is not the authority, and the authority’s own text is the one to act on.
Audi's own number for this recall: 69GT. That is the number on the owner letter and on the dealer paperwork. 26V266 is the number NHTSA gave the same campaign, and the number this page is filed under. They are one recall, written two ways.
What owners ask about this recall
- Which vehicles does recall 26V266 cover?
- Audi Q5, Audi Q5 Sportback, Audi SQ5, Audi SQ5 Sportback, model year 2025.
- What is wrong with them?
- Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (Audi) is recalling certain 2025 Q5, Q5 Sportback, SQ5, and SQ5 Sportback vehicles. The driver and front passenger seat belts may have been manufactured incorrectly, and fail to properly restrain occupants during a crash.
- What can happen if it is not put right?
- Improperly restrained occupants have an increased risk of injury during a crash.
- Is there a fix yet?
- Yes, and it is free. Dealers will replace the driver and front passenger seat belts as necessary, free of charge. Owner notification letters were mailed May 29, 2026. Owners may contact Audi's customer service at 1-800-253-2834. Audi's number for this recall is 69GT.
- What should I do now?
- Check your own vehicle by its VIN with NHTSA, which is the record to act on. Audi calls this recall 69GT, which is the number on the owner letter and the dealer paperwork.
Answered from the register this site holds. NHTSA is the record to act on.
What the authority says can happen if this is not fixed: “Improperly restrained occupants have an increased risk of injury during a crash.”
affected
in the notice
caught
| Campaign | 26V266 |
|---|---|
| Filed by | Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. |
| System at fault | Seat Belts:Pretensioner |
| Reported to NHTSA | 24 April 2026 |
| Model years | 2025-2025 |
| Vehicles named | AUDI Q5, AUDI Q5 SPORTBACK, AUDI SQ5, AUDI SQ5 SPORTBACK |
What the notice says today
The defect
Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (Audi) is recalling certain 2025 Q5, Q5 Sportback, SQ5, and SQ5 Sportback vehicles. The driver and front passenger seat belts may have been manufactured incorrectly, and fail to properly restrain occupants during a crash.
The consequence
Improperly restrained occupants have an increased risk of injury during a crash.
The remedy
Dealers will replace the driver and front passenger seat belts as necessary, free of charge. Owner notification letters were mailed May 29, 2026. Owners may contact Audi's customer service at 1-800-253-2834. Audi's number for this recall is 69GT.
What it said before
Nothing has changed while we have been watching. We last read the wording of this campaign on 17 September 2026, and it matched the copy we already held.
That copy hashes to 70e90e8f551e4dc03399ad19b2edf976…, so if it is ever edited the change is provable rather than a matter of memory.
This is one of 451 notices in the record whose component field names seat belts. Across that group the median wait before owners were written to was 48 days.
Last checked . No change has been recorded in the wording.
The same recall in other countries
This campaign carries a manufacturer code that also appears in another country’s register, which means the same defect was recalled there too.
- Canada: Transport Canada recall 2026208, recorded 24 April 2026 (within a week of the American filing)
- European Union: Safety Gate alert SR/01448/26, published 22 May 2026, raised by Germany (the Commission’s own page) (28 days after the American filing)
Matched on 69GT, the manufacturer’s own number for this campaign, which is the only field the registers share. Exact match, nothing paired on brand and date. The two dates are adjacent instruments rather than the same one, so a difference of a day or two means nothing.
How often the two countries file on the same day · The European alerts
The models named here, across their whole recall history
- Audi Q5 recalls: 25 US campaigns since 2016
- Audi Q5 Sportback recalls: 6 US campaigns
- Audi SQ5 recalls: 14 US campaigns
How to cite this record
Quoting the wording on this page means quoting a version, so the date belongs in the citation:
CarsMultiverse, recall 26V266, wording as read on 17 September 2026. https://carsmultiverse.com/recall/26v266/
The copy quoted above hashes to 70e90e8f551e4dc03399ad19b2edf976…. If the notice is reworded later, that fingerprint will not match, which is how a reader checks that the quotation was of the version we say it was.
The cross-border matches used on this site are deposited as a citable dataset: doi:10.5281/zenodo.22087136. The recall wording itself is published by the national authority named above and is theirs, not ours.
The recall record and its wording are published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and are US Government public domain. The dated archive, the comparison and any before-and-after above are CarsMultiverse. How fresh every engine behind this page is, is public on the status page. To check a specific vehicle, use NHTSA’s own VIN lookup.
Other Audi notices we hold
- 26V240: 2019-2023 Audi E-Tron Quattro, 2020-2023 Audi E-Tron Sportback, 2024 Q8 E-Tron, Q8 Sportback E-Tron, SQ8 E-Tron, and SQ8 Sportback E-Tron
- 26V209: 2026 Q3
- 26V125: 2019 Audi Q8, Audi A7, and Audi A6
- 25V900: 2019-2026
- 25V899: 2025 SQ6 E-Tron, SQ6 Sportback E-Tron, Q6 Sportback E-Tron, A6, A5, A6 Sportback E-Tron, Q6 E-Tron, S5, and S6 Sportback E-Tron
- 25V294: 2022-2024 Q5 Quattro and Q5 Sportback Quattro
- 25V227: 2022-2023 RS E-TRON GT and E-TRON GT
- 25V226: 2025 SQ6 and Q6
All 59 Audi campaigns we hold · Every manufacturer in the record
The fingerprint of this notice
We take a SHA-256 of each of the three blocks of text the authority publishes and keep the first eight characters. As we last read campaign 26V266 on 23 August 2026, they were:
- Defect summary
a0899f2a - Consequence
bce1f9f2 - Remedy
c0e3863a
We first read this notice on 21 August 2026. It has not moved since. If it ever does, these characters will not match, and the change will be dated here.
The wording we hold for 26V266 · how the whole register is watched
This notice names one vehicle among several registers that have written about it. Every notice this site holds for the Audi Q5 Sportback, in all seven, is kept on that vehicle's own page, with the newest in each.
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Owners of these cars
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