Introduction to the 2026 MG4 Urban
When the MG4 EV was launched in 2022, the automotive landscape was less varied than it is now - and that's a reflection on the hectic pace of change, with new releases from rival Chinese firms to MG coming in thick and fast.
To that end, MG has added another electric hatch into the same class as the MG4, in order to combat value-oriented competitors and provide a more affordable option for its own customers.
It's called the MG4 Urban and despite sharing its badge (and a market segment) with one of its own stablemates, it's actually a completely different car underneath.
Pros & cons of the 2026 MG4 Urban
Pros:
• Vast cabin, huge boot
• Smooth to drive
• Affordable pricing
Cons:
• Why reuse the MG4 name?
• Divisive styling
• Restricted range
Exterior & design of the 2026 MG4 Urban
• Smoothed-off appearance
• Said to reference Cyberster roadster
• 16- or 17-inch wheels offered
You might need to squint a bit and use your imagination most feverishly, but the car the MG4 Urban is said to reference in its styling is none other than MG's grandest product, the Cyberster roadster.
We think that might be a bit of a reach, but with its split front bumper design, wide-set air intakes in the nose, swoopy headlights and the requisite full-width light bar at the rear (complete with angled-in LED details), a lot of the aesthetic flourishes on this car can be linked to that two-seat soft-top.
Even the larger of two wheel sizes, with customers able to choose from 16- or 17-inch items, is in the same design as those of the Cyberster: dark centres with silvery outer highlights.
Whatever you think of those callbacks to the Cyberster, the Urban is a far smoother, more bubbly shape than the MG4 EV. The key point to note, though, is that although this is the cheaper of the two MG4s available, it's actually almost 110mm longer and it's taller too.
Dimensions of the 2026 MG4 Urban
Length: 4,395mm
Width: 1,842mm (excluding mirrors)
Height: 1,549mm
Wheelbase: 2,750mm
Paint colours for the 2026 MG4 Urban
There are seven colours in total for the MG4 Urban. Both Arctic White and Holborn Blue are solid finishes, while the metallic choices amount to Stone Green, Cosmic Silver, Black Pearl and Camden Grey.
Finally, Dynamic Red is offered in a tri-coat finish. The only no-cost colour for the MG4 Urban is the white, while the four metallics plus Holborn should all be one level of extra expense, while the red is the costliest look. However, if Urban pricing follows MG's European convention, paint will be the only cost option available on the entire car. We do expect the colour names to be altered for the Irish market - the above are from the UK.
Interior, practicality, tech & comfort of the 2026 MG4 Urban
• Acres of rear-seat space
• Massive boot
• Decent level of tech
The main strength of the MG4 Urban is its immense practicality delivering a vast passenger cabin and an equally whopping boot.
Technology in the car is fine, while material quality is OK too; not flashy, maybe, given the value ethos of the Urban, but nicely put together and reasonably pleasing on the eye.
Only a few surfaces feel carefully built down to a cost, so it's a largely agreeable place to have to spend some time.
Getting comfortable in the driver's seat
In the lower-spec MG4 Urban (likely to be called Excite), the car has a six-way manually adjustable driver's seat, but stepping up to the higher grade sees electrical adjustment come into play.
Coupled with a full, manual rake-and-reach steering column and a light, airy front glasshouse in the Urban, including quarter-lights in the front pillars, the driving position you can attain in the car is generally superb.
Although, even with the seat at its lowest setting, taller people might find they feel like they are sitting a little high relative to the vehicle's body, perched up rather than hunkered down in it.
Infotainment and technology
All models of the MG4 Urban feature a twin-screen dashboard as standard, which brings with it navigation along with wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay connectivity.
The main infotainment screen is a 12.8-inch item, while the driver's cluster is a seven-inch affair - this is the only difference between the Urban and the grander MG4, as the latter has the same-size centre display but a bigger 10.25-inch cluster.
The entry-level Urban also comes with a reversing camera, but folk wanting a 360-degree camera system can step up to the higher-grade car. Doing so also brings in a wireless phone charging pad on the console in the front of the car.
Practicality around the cabin
A reasonable smattering of storage solutions can be found inside the MG4 Urban, with a fair-sized glovebox, chunky door pockets complete with sculpted-out drinks-bottle holders, two cupholders up on what would normally be the transmission tunnel, a lidded centre cubby in the front armrest and one of those 'under-dash' storage areas that is also the location of the front pair of USB-C connections plus a 12-volt socket.
Rear-seat passenger space
There can be few complaints from anyone under about six-foot-eight tall with the sheer amount of space MG has managed to fashion out of the rear seats in the Urban.
There aren't many cars, in any class of vehicle - never mind compact hatchbacks - that are as voluminous in the second row as this MG EV. It's a brilliant feature of the model, with the company making the most of its lack of an internal combustion engine, a flat floor pan from its electrical structure and the increased length, height and wheelbase compared to an MG4 to deliver two seating positions which are generous almost to the point of a fault in terms of leg-, knee- and headroom.
You could seat five in the MG4 Urban, although the central rear seat is a little smaller and not as capacious as the outer chairs which flank it, due to the central tunnel impinging into the footwell there, but certainly four very tall adults would be more than comfortable inside the Urban for longer journeys.
Fitting child seats to the MG4 Urban
The MG4 Urban has ISOFIX positions with top tethers in the outer two seats of the rear bench. And, given just how huge the back of the car is, and how large the rear doors on the Urban are too, fitting bulky child seats into the second row of the EV should be no problem at all. Better still, the Urban has a Euro NCAP child occupant protection rating of a healthy 85 per cent.
Boot space in the MG4 Urban
This is another one of the real strengths of the MG4 Urban. With all seats in use, there's up to a goliath 577 litres of cargo capacity in the boot of the EV hatchback. For this class, it's an enormous figure and it further helps that the Urban has an adjustable boot floor, plus a handy underfloor stowage area of 98 litres (which is included in the 577-litre figure, not on top of it).
On the higher-spec models, an uprated stereo system does ever so marginally trim the boot back to 568-1,362 litres, that latter number with the second row folded away. On the base car, the equivalent stat is 1,364 litres.
Towing with the MG4 Urban
All variants of the MG4 Urban can tow 500kg of trailer, maximum, and that figure is the same for both braked and unbraked units.
Safety in the MG4 Urban
Euro NCAP has already put the MG4 Urban through its paces and it has recorded a full-marks score of five stars overall. This breaks down into individual sub-section results of 87, 85, 85 and 80 per cent for the adult occupant, child occupant, vulnerable road users and safety assist disciplines, respectively.
Performance of the 2026 MG4 Urban
• Modest performance but comfortable
• Two power outputs and battery options
• Front-wheel drive, unlike the MG4 EV
Although it's called an MG4, the Urban sits on an entirely different platform to the other electric hatch with the same name. The MG4 Urban is front-wheel drive, not rear-driven (like many of MG's other single-motor EVs), so it's a little more conventional to drive for electric adopters used to modest front-driven hatchbacks.
There are two electric motor outputs offered for the Urban, which are linked to the battery pack selected. Choose the smaller unit and a 150hp motor is included, while the bigger battery results in a modest increase of power to 160hp.
Both versions of the MG4 Urban make peak torque of 250Nm, so there's little to choose between them for performance in reality - the former model will do 0-100km/h in 9.6 seconds, the latter shaves a tenth off that for a 9.5-second sprint.
Driving the MG4 Urban 54kWh Long Range on UK roads - Matt Robinson
Nothing the MG4 Urban does from a dynamic perspective is going to take you by surprise. This is a car which has been tuned to be as easy and as unintimidating to drive in urban and semi-urban areas as it can possibly be and judged by those parameters then you can't call its safely-safely chassis tune anything other than a resounding success on the part of MG's engineers.
It's not without merit, as on the move the Urban does lots of things very well and nothing notably badly. True, there's fairly elevated tyre noise at higher road speeds on rougher surfaces, while those looking for a keener-cornering EV would be better off with the other MG4, as the older car is a more fluid, progressive thing to punt along, whereas the Urban is simply clean and tidy in the corners, and not much more. It has nice steering, though, which is a boon.
In terms of rolling refinement and ride comfort, there's little to fault with the MG4 Urban. It rolls along really sweetly, and it can even deal with some truly tragic sections of road surfacing with a significant degree of aplomb.
Yes, if the springs and dampers are asked to operate at their full cushioning remit, they can occasionally run out of travel, and the Urban will then thump through deeper compressions. But, for most of the time, it's smooth and it's quiet and it's comfortable, and it's also notably adept at motorway speeds - here, the Urban tracks a steady and stable line, and feels assured and composed at 110km/h-plus.
When it comes to straight-line speed, this is one of the more modest EVs on sale right now, but it'll scoot up to 100km/h in acceptably short order; acceleration does tail off in a pronounced fashion beyond that point, but that'll only really matter to owners on those very rare occasions they've got to join a fast-flowing motorway from a very short slip road.
In the main, the nicely calibrated accelerator pedal and the effective, well-judged brakes (with four levels of regen offered, including a full one-pedal driving mode) make piloting the MG4 Urban a breeze.
Range, battery, charging and running costs of the 2026 MG4 Urban
• Two battery packs offered
• Up to 415km of range
• Peak DC-charging rate is OK
The MG4 Urban is a shorter-range EV than the MG4 it serves to complement, and this car effectively replaces the old 'Standard Range' MG4 with the 49kWh battery pack.
Despite this, MG still offers two battery packs for the Urban, so prospective owners can balance price vs range, although the DC-charging speeds are not anything to write home about.
Battery options and official range
Both of the battery packs in the MG4 Urban are lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) in their chemical make-up, when some of the larger power-cell arrangements in other MGs can use nickel manganese cobalt (NMC).
For the Urban, the Standard Range car uses a 42.8kWh battery, of which 41.9kWh is usable, resulting in an official range of 324km.
The Long Range models instead deploy a 53.9kWh battery (52.8kWh usable), which increases that driving figure to a theoretical 415km at an official quoted consumption rate of 15.5kWh/100km.
Real-world range and efficiency of the MG4 Urban
It would appear, from our test, that the MG4 Urban can live up to its impressive range claims. We drove the car for around 50km in 9-10 degrees Centigrade temperatures, on a grey, rainy winter's day that is typical for this part of the world.
We used climate control, heated seats and steering wheel, wipers, lights and the onboard stereo, so plenty of drains on the system, and for the route - which was a mix of all road types, from city-streets crawling pace to high-speed motorway cruising - we didn't drive in a particularly efficient fashion.
Yet the MG4 Urban Long Range managed to show an indicated 14.1kWh/100km. That's seriously impressive real-world efficiency in such conditions and, as such, the car should be easily capable of 375km to a charge even in adverse weather - putting it very close to the official 415km.
Charging up the MG4 Urban
Given that most EV owners will charge up at home anyway, the MG4 Urban's charging rates are fine, especially the 11kW AC peak speed, but neither 82kW for the Standard Range nor 87kW for the Long Range model are resetting the bar in this class for DC charging speeds.
Even so, on a typical 7kW domestic wallbox, the Standard Range would require 7.5 hours to do a 10-100 per cent charge, while on a commonly found 50kW DC public charger owners would be looking at a 10-80 per cent charge taking 40 minutes.
At its fastest, on a suitably powerful charger, the 10-80 time on this MG4 Urban drops to 28 minutes.
For the Long Range, all the times increase - despite the faster DC peak rate (those extra 11kWh or so of cells are the reason). The comparable times for charging the 54kWh car, in the same order as we listed them above for the Standard Range, are therefore nine hours, 50 minutes and 30 minutes.
Servicing the MG4 Urban
MG's recommended servicing schedule for the 4 Urban is every 12 months or 25,000km, whichever comes sooner.
MG4 Urban warranty
All new MGs in this country are covered by a seven-year warranty, which has an unlimited-kilometres rate in the first 12 months, and then a 150,000km distance cap for years two to seven of the cover.
Irish pricing & rivals to the 2026 MG4 Urban
• Should be cheaper than MG4 EV
• Everything is standard, bar optional paint
• Priced to target affordable rivals
While we await Irish prices and specifications, it's fair to assume the MG4 Urban will be cheaper than the MG4 it is going to sit alongside in showrooms - because that's the whole point of its existence.
We'd expect the usual Excite and Exclusive trims, with the Standard Range coming in both specifications, and then the Long Range sold purely as an Exclusive on top.
Again, we're presuming here based on UK equipment levels, but we'd reckon on the Excite Urban having 16-inch alloy wheels, the twin screens with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto plus navigation, a reversing camera, climate control and the brilliant MG Pilot system.
The latter allows you to tailor all the advanced driver assistance systems to your preferred settings in one dedicated menu, then save them and activate them every time you start the car by simply swiping down at the top of the touchscreen and tapping the MG Pilot icon.
Stepping up to an Exclusive should bring in 17-inch wheels, rear privacy glass, six-way electrical adjustment for the driver's seat, heated front seats and steering wheel, ambient cabin lighting, the wireless smartphone charger, live services and a 360-degree camera system too.
Rivals include the whole array of super-affordable EVs coming from the Chinese groups and all their associated marques, such as BYD and Leapmotor, as well as the existing MG4 too.
However, complicating matters for all of these value EVs is the scintillating Renault 5 E-Tech, which shows that you don't have to sacrifice all style and joy just to have a thoroughly usable electric car at the lower end of the market.
Verdict - should you buy the 2026 MG4 Urban?
If you want a terrific value, incredibly spacious and affordable EV, then yes - you should definitely give the MG4 Urban serious consideration. It might be a bit awkward to look at and the driving experience is, on the whole, unremarkable, but it has enough about it from a dynamic angle that you would be more than happy to live with the Urban, and while it is relatively short-range in the wider scheme of things, it appears as if it could still crack 400km to a charge on regular occasions.
Surprising it may be to see this carmaker offering two MG4s in one market sector, but the Urban is a welcome new addition to its fleet, and it dovetails very nicely with the existing MG4 we've all come to know and love already.
FAQs about the 2026 MG4 Urban
Is the MG4 Urban a different car to the MG4?
Yes, it is. Although they use the same model badging, the MG4 (updated for the 2026 model year) and the MG4 Urban sit on different EV underpinnings (the former on the Modular Scalable Platform, the latter the new 'E3' baseboard).
This means that the Urban is front-wheel drive, has lower power outputs and smaller battery packs than the MG4, but it is also slightly bigger in terms of its physical dimensions.
Does the MG4 Urban qualify for the SEAI grant?
Although we don't know prices for the MG4 Urban as yet, it's certainly not going to broach the €60,000 barrier - or anything like - so yes, it will qualify for the SEAI grant.
Has the MG4 Urban been assessed for safety?
Yes, and it picked up a full five-star award with impressive scores in each of the four sub-disciplines of the examination. You can read the MG4 Urban's full report right here.
Want to know more about the 2026 MG4 Urban?
If there's anything about the new MG4 Urban we've not covered, or you'd like help in choosing between it and other cars, you can avail of our expert advice service via the Ask Us Anything page.
