New Volkswagen Golf GTI Edition 50 2026 review: great to drive and easy to live with

Verdict

Is this peak Golf GTI? Not quite – the Mk7 Clubsport S, with its focused chassis and six-speed manual gearbox, still lays claim to that title – but the Volkswagen Golf GTI Edition 50 comes within touching distance. It does everything a GTI should do, being as easy to live with as it is fun to drive; the five-seat, five-door body is complemented by a set of ingredients that set this anniversary special apart from its lesser siblings. It’s pricey, but worth almost every penny. 

Every few years, Volkswagen gifts itself a very special birthday present. Starting out by marking 25 years of GTI with the Mk4 Golf in 2001, here we are a quarter of a century later celebrating five decades of VW’s go-faster hot hatchback.

This is the GTI Edition 50 and, tempting as it might have been to just add some stickers, new wheels and £5k to the price, Volkswagen has instead gone the whole nine yards. In fact, the mechanical changes are extensive enough to make this the fastest road-going VW to ever lap the Nurburgring Nordschleife – in 7:46.13.

Key to the tweaks is the uprated 2.0-litre turbo petrol engine, tuned here to deliver 321bhp and 420Nm – 25bhp and 20Nm more than the current Clubsport, and just 7bhp shy of the all-wheel-drive Golf R. The Edition 50 uses the same seven-speed DSG gearbox, with drive sent exclusively to the front wheels via an electronic differential.

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Like the base GTI, the Edition 50 is 15mm lower than a standard Golf, but comes with a specially developed Nurburgring drive mode, plus new S+ and M+ settings for the gearbox. The Dynamic Chassis Control (DCC) system is minutely adjustable in 15 stages, on a sliding scale from Comfort to Sport.

Prices start at £47,995 – almost £4k more than a GTI Clubsport and £1,145 more than an R – but the car we drove also featured the £3,675 Performance Package, taking things north of £50k. This bundle comprises new 19-inch ‘Warmenau’ wheels and semi-slick Bridgestone Potenza tyres with an extra two degrees of negative camber on the front axle – apparently saving 3.3kg per corner. It gets a further-reduced ride height with 20 per cent stiffer springs, plus a twin-exit titanium exhaust. All together, Volkswagen claims these options can reduce the car’s kerbweight by up to 25kg.

There are also plenty of visual upgrades, which to our eyes boost the aesthetic to make this one of the meanest-looking GTIs to date. The new wheels and lower stance give the car a more menacing profile, while GTI 50 badges on the rear wing and mirror caps ensure you won’t mistake this anniversary special for a more mundane Golf. There are five colours to choose from, including the stunning Dark Moss Green.

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Inside, there’s more GTI 50 branding, red seatbelts and red pedals – note: the jury’s out on these – plus a new take on the famous GTI tartan. The heavily bolstered seats are comfortable and supportive, while a lovely suede-like steering wheel is available as an option.

Volkswagen’s aim for the Edition 50 was to make it “the most competitive GTI to date” – eclipsing even the Mk7 Clubsport S, which is widely considered the high watermark for VW’s sporting sub-brand. On paper the new car has most of the right ingredients, save for maybe the inclusion of an engagement-enhancing manual gearbox – something that would have saved weight, but ultimately, made the car slower on a circuit.

So what’s it like in real-world conditions? Thankfully, that’s exactly what the weather gods ordered for our first drive on the roads around Barcelona; if we wanted to travel 1,000 miles to experience a car just as we would on an average winter’s day in the UK, we nailed it.

This is a car that at first felt a bit sketchy, but quickly proved itself with a bit of heat in those semi-slick tyres. It’s easy to push wide into understeer if you’re too hasty on the throttle – especially on damp roads – but hold off and the diff will lock in and pull you out of tight corners with almost unrelenting grip.

Within the first few yards, then, the Edition 50 feels livelier than a standard GTI. Not as unhinged as a Honda Civic Type R, but that was never the Golf’s remit. It bobs about a bit in its stiffest suspension settings, yet if you slacken things off it’s almost as easy to live with as a 1.5 eTSI.

The engine – VW’s tried and tested EA888 2.0-litre turbo – remains a flexible, responsive and rewarding motor, whether you’re taking it easy or chasing a professional driver around the undulating Parcmotor Castellolí race track. Acceleration is strong (0-62mph takes just 5.3 seconds) and with enough runway or clear autobahn ahead, it’ll keep accelerating to a frankly unnecessary 168mph.

Within the infotainment screen you fine-tune the car’s various settings – opting for pure exhaust noise or deciding to have that sound augmented through the car’s speakers. The two do at least compliment one another and help add a bit of theatre to the driving experience; without it, things can seem a bit muted, so we left it on most of the time.

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The control weights are perfectly judged. There’s just enough weight to the steering, and the brake pedal offers plenty of feel and feedback, and there’s decent travel without feeling wooly or imprecise. The DSG transmission is super-slick, with genuine duality: it’ll slip through the gears imperceptibly around town, and fire home each cog with incredible accuracy at speed. We just wish the steering-wheel mounted paddles were larger and more tactile.

But the beauty of any GTI is its ability to slip into your daily routine without compromise. And while the old Clubsport S perhaps had that last degree of precision and driver engagement, you could argue that it was a little too compromised for regular use. The GTI 50 suffers none of these same issues, proving refined and usable in almost all situations.

Yet for some, that price will make the Edition 50 a tough pill to swallow, especially given that production is limited by time rather than numbers. Volkswagen will assemble as many as it has demand for, throughout the GTI's 50th year. For comparison, only 400 Mk7 Clubsport S cars were built – many of which still command strong money even today.

At least the Edition 50’s cabin feels special, with those tartan seats and other trinkets complementing the car’s solid fit and finish. The infotainment system is still a little clunky, but vastly improved since its introduction with the Mk8 Golf in 2020; the touch-sensitive climate-control sliders are now illuminated for example, meaning it’s no longer a challenge to change the temperature after dark.

Being a five-door hatchback, practicality is as strong here as it is in any modern Golf, with room for adults to sit comfortably in the back. Without the R’s driveshafts and four-wheel drive system to contend with, there’s a usable 374-litre boot – and the seats fold in a 60:40-split formation should you need a bit of extra space.

It’d be remiss of us not to at least touch on the GTI’s running costs given its remit as a do-it-all family car. But while time on track means our data is skewed, six months in the heavier, thirstier Golf R has seen us regularly exceed 35mpg; the Edition 50 should therefore, come pretty close to its publicised fuel economy figures in normal use.

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