Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has confirmed it will officially wind down production of the entry-level Land Rover Discovery Sport in December 2026, bringing a quiet end to the rugged compact SUV’s 11-year manufacturing lifecycle. While the vehicle remains active on digital configurators in select areas like the UK, factory order banks have officially closed across major European markets including Germany, France, and Spain.
A spokesperson for JLR confirmed the retirement timeline, explaining that production will cease entirely at the end of the year as the vehicle hits the conclusion of its normal product lifecycle. The automaker is executing a managed phase-out across various global manufacturing facilities to smoothly handle the drop in remaining allocations.
The timing of the Discovery Sport’s exit is heavily influenced by the European Union’s updated General Safety Regulation 2 (GSR2) framework, which recently went into full legal effect. The new regulations mandate strict active safety systems and hardware that were never engineered into the aging entry-level Land Rover. These are the same regulations that also forced the combustion-powered Porsche Macan out of production.
While JLR chose to invest capital to update the rest of its contemporary fleet to meet the updated safety standards, the Discovery Sport’s age and thin financial profit margins meant that re-engineering the model was no longer economically viable.
The decision marks a sharp fall from grace for a vehicle that once served as the primary sales driver for the brand. In its first full year on sale in 2016, the compact SUV moved more than 122,000 units globally, making it JLR’s bestselling product. Despite a comprehensive mid-life overhaul in 2019 that introduced an upgraded platform and modern interior tech, demand cratered over the decade. By 2025, annual volume fell to less than a tenth of its peak, cementing it as the company’s slowest-selling vehicle, just behind the larger full-size Discovery, which is also approaching its own retirement.
Retiring the Discovery Sport frees up valuable plant capacity at the company’s Halewood plant in the UK as the factory tools up for JLR’s new Electrified Modular Architecture (EMA). The assembly space will host the production of the highly anticipated Range Rover GT all-electric grand tourer. While the Evoque will soldier on for now, industry analysts expect it to eventually make way when the rugged, compact Land Rover Defender Sport makes its official global debut next year.