Citroen Berlingo 2026 review | A no-nonsense, van-based people carrier
Citroen Berlingo cars for sale
4.0
Expert review
Pros
Enormous boot and flexible seating
Affordable to buy and run
Sliding rear doors
Cons
Lots of body lean
Seven-seat XL models is expensive
Some rivals have longer new-car warranties
The CarGurus verdict
The Berlingo does a very impressive job of disguising its boxy, humble roots, both in the way it looks and how it drives. As well as being comfortable and surprisingly quiet, its muscular engines are able to pull substantial loads with very little drama. When driven solo, it feels brisk and even quite fun.
Above all, the Berlingo offers endless practicality and myriad clever storage solutions, which will prove especially useful for anyone trying to juggle family needs and self-employed work requirements. It’s just refreshing to drive a car that is so honest and unpretentious about its purpose, which is cleverly reflected in the Berlingo’s design.
What is the Citroen Berlingo?
This third-generation Citroen Berlingo is one of the most practical passenger cars you can buy. Although it can’t disguise its commercial-vehicle origins, Citroen has done a decent job of differentiating the Berlingo from the courier-spec van it is based upon. Chiefly, this is by referencing the quirky styling cues of its passenger car stablemates: vehicles such as the C3 and C5 Aircross.
The huge windows, lashings of lower-body cladding and vibrantly coloured Dali-esque detailing are complemented by matt-black A-pillars and roof rails, plus funky double-decker front lights. It is, in short, a family car in the purest sense, putting what is conventionally considered stylish to one side for the sake of outright practicality.
The third-generation Berlingo was launched in 2018, and while it hardly blew the world away with sales success, it found a dedicated fanbase who praised it for a pragmatic approach to family motoring. It was then given a refresh at the very beginning of 2023, bringing the looks – if not the car’s profile – bang up to date.
One point to note: despite its many similarities, the e-Berlingo is, in Citroen’s eyes, a distinct model in its own right, not just ‘the electric version’. With that in mind, this review will focus solely on the petrol and diesel variants.
How practical is it?
One look at the Berlingo and you can tell it would reach the practicality hall of fame, if such a thing existed. It’s available as a five-seater or ‘XL’ seven-seater, so whether you play the part-family, part-delivery van card or simply go down the full-on party bus route, the Berlingo has you covered.
The sliding rear door will save you face when you’ve proudly squeezed into a tight parking spot, only to remember you still need to get the kids out of the back. And the awning-sized tailgate will play a blinder when it comes to keeping the rain off your head while loading up the weekly shop.
The middle row of three seats (with a 60:40 split on Plus models, or a 40:20:40 divide on Max versions) will collapse almost completely flat into the floor, freeing up masses of boot space. The extra rear seats in the seven-seat XL can be whipped out without too much sweat and cursing as well. Consequently, that old sofa bed which has been in the spare room for years can be whisked off to the recycling centre quicker than you can throw the cushions out of an upstairs window.
Getting into the nitty gritty, the regular Berlingo has 775 litres of storage space behind its rear seats, or a whopping 3,000 litres of space with those seats folded flat. The seven-seat XL, with its 2,975mm wheelbase (200mm more than standard) has a colossal 1,050 litres of storage space behind the middle row of seats with the third row folded flat. With the middle row down, there’s 3,500 litres to play with: almost enough for a five-a-side football game.
The Berlingo also comes with more storage solutions than a Big Yellow Box warehouse. With so many cubby holes, bins, lockers, cupholders, shelves, and pockets, you’ll need a spreadsheet to keep track of where you stashed all those sweets and smartphones confiscated from the kids.
The rear parcel shelf is also stiffer than a scaffolder’s plank, so it will double up as a nappy changing mat, allowing you to wave goodbye to public changing rooms once and for all.
What's it like to drive?
Given its frontal bluffness, big windscreen and those turbulence-inducing roof rails, there is surprisingly little in the way of wind noise when you’re bowling along in the Berlingo. Furthermore, for such an echoingly sized cabin, road noise is well suppressed.
On top of this, the soft suspension soaks up most lumps and bumps pretty effectively. However, you will need to employ a ‘steady as she goes’ strategy, as the merest hint of a bend will induce lots of roly-poly body lean. Honestly, it’s quite entertaining, as so many modern cars are built to resist roll or to be sporty. In a Berlingo, the lack of ultimate grip and all that body movement means you can have fun at truly ordinary speeds. It should go without saying, if you’re looking for something that’ll feel its best being hustled down a B-road, this isn’t the car for you. Yet that doesn’t mean it won’t put a smile on your face.
Post-facelift, now that the Berlingo range has been fully padded out, there’s a selection of petrol and diesel engines to complement the electric powertrain of the separate e-Berlingo. The Plus is available with a 1.2-litre turbocharged three-cylinder engine with 109bhp, which is paired with a six-speed manual gearbox. There’s also a 1.5-litre four-cylinder turbodiesel with 101bhp and a manual transmission, or a 129bhp 1.5-litre diesel with an eight-speed automatic (called ‘EAT8’). The XL-size Berlingo is only available with the diesel engines, while Max trim is only offered with the standard wheelbase and the 129bhp diesel.
Petrol power works perfectly well in the Berlingo, but few manufacturers make better diesel engines than Citroen. The 1.5-litre units here are no exception. Both are smooth, quiet and deliver punchy performance, as well as returning excellent fuel consumption.
Technology, equipment & infotainment
What else might you find in the Narnia-like interior? There’s a roof light that doubles up as a stowage area and runs the length of the cabin. The Modutop, as it’s known, is a £750 option on the Max model (handy hint: the light is turned off by accessing the settings in the infotainment system, not by the interior light switches in the roof). There are also overhead lockers above the boot and pockets above both front seats for maps, gloves, sunglasses and all the clobber found in a family car.
Plus versions of the Berlingo get 16-inch steel wheels (they look glorious, we have to say), electric heated door mirrors, LED headlights, automatic wipers, air conditioning, rear parking sensors, a height adjustable driver’s seat and tray tables on the back of the front seats. You’ll also find a a 10.0-inch digital driver’s display and a 10.0-inch central touchscreen, complete with a DAB radio and Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity.
Make your way into a Max and there are a number of upgrades. These include 17-inch alloy wheels, dual-zone climate control, a 180-degree reversing camera, Advanced Comfort seats (some of the best this side of a Rolls Royce), a heated steering wheel and more.
A number of safety features are available on the Plus and Max models, too. The Plus has the standard Safety Pack, which brings with it lane-keep assist, autonomous emergency braking, speed limit recognition, traffic sign recognition, adaptive headlights, driver attention alert, cruise control and a speed limiter. The Max features the Advance Safety Pack, which is exactly the same bar an attention alert system that uses a driver-monitoring camera.
Some features that are optional and available only on the plusher Max model include keyless entry, Citroen Connect navigation software and a single, seemingly unnamed pack that brings with it front- and side parking sensors (adding to the rear sensors), a blind-spot monitoring system, adaptive cruise control with a stop-and-go function, lane positioning assist, and advanced grip control with hill-descent assist.
That’s pretty much it. Sure, you can choose between five colours and three different alloy wheel designs, but the overall Berlingo lineup is wonderfully simple.
Citroen Berlingo running costs
The Citroen Berlingo is built on the same platform as the Vauxhall Combo Life and Peugeot Rifter, and given van versions of those vehicles usually sit cheek-by-jowl on the same trading estates, it is easy to play one off against the other to find the best deal. That said, because of its versatility and dual-purpose nature, the Berlingo is a sought-after used buy, so don’t go wandering into a Citroen dealership expecting the salesperson to offer a huge discount.
For some time, diesel Berlingos outsold petrol versions by about six to one. Consequently, there are far more diesels to choose from on the used market. On the flip side, as petrol is more in vogue, these models command a premium.
If you’re not too fussy about colour or spec, you will be able to pick up a very smart five-seat diesel Berlingo with well under 20,000 miles on the clock for around £14,000. Generally speaking, seven-seat versions command the thick-end of £1,000 more than their five-seat siblings.
Petrol versions of the Berlingo are pretty economical, with combined economy figures of around 45mpg. Obviously, achieving these figures will depend on how much weight you haul around, and how much force you squeeze onto the accelerator pedal. The fuel consumption figures of three-cylinder petrol engines are known to be significantly affected by high throttle demands, so a considered driving style is required to get the most miles from them.
The 1.5-litre BlueHDi diesel engines are claimed to achieve fuel economy beyond 50mpg. And with a 50-litre tank on board, once settled into a motorway cruise, they are capable of significant mileages between fill-ups.
The Berlingo is the absolute antithesis of a sports car, so it’s no surprise that insurance costs reflect this. Group ratings start from as low as 11 for the least powerful petrol version in entry-level Flair trim, topping out at group 15 for the most powerful BlueHDi models.
Citroen Berlingo reliability
Given it’s based on a commercial van, and that such vehicles need to be sturdy and efficient, it all bodes well for the Berlingo.
In terms of a warranty, you start off with Citroen’s usual three-year/60,000-mile cover (with no mileage limit for the first two years) from when the vehicle is first registered. Then, if you get your vehicle serviced at a main dealer according to schedule, your warranty is then automatically extended up to a maximum of eight years and 100,000 miles.
Service intervals are every 12,000 miles or 12 months, whichever comes first. And because the Berlingo is a pretty basic machine, it shouldn’t cost you a fortune. You can also take the sting out of paying in one hit by signing up to a staggered payment plan, which should cost you in the region of £16 per month. This will cover the usual health checks, as well as fluid and filter changes, but not consumable parts such as tyres and brake pads.
The Berlingo has undergone a couple of relatively minor recalls and these only affected a small number of vehicles. One such recall concerned a handbrake component that could fail. Another was for diesel-engined models, regarding potential damage to the particulate filter in the exhaust system.
Has the Berlingo featured in any survey results? Sadly not, but Citroen as a brand certainly has. According to the 2025 What Car? Reliability Survey, Citroen came home in 10th place with a score of 93.9%. Considering the list is 30 brands long, and Citroen hasn’t always had a positive reputation for durability, this is a very good showing.
- The range is pretty straightforward. There are two body styles: the standard five-seat M and the longer, seven-seat XL. Then there are two trim levels: Plus and Max.
- There are only five colours and wheel designs to choose from with a Citroen Berlingo. However, given how complicated some model ranges can be, we find this simplicity rather refreshing.
- If you’re looking to buy a used Berlingo, you need to be aware of something important. After first going on sale in 2018, the electric version of the Berlingo arrived in 2020, shortly after which the combustion-engined variants were discontinued. After a backlash from customers, these were reinstated in 2023, but with one key difference. To allow Citroen to comply with emissions targets, it was legally classified as a window van rather than a car. This meant it had to be sold with a mesh bulkhead between the boot and passenger compartment (it was only available in five-seater M form), which largely ruined its practicality. It was also liable for an increased rate of VED road tax, and was subject to reduced speed limits on dual carriageways. We discovered in early 2026 that this had changed, and that combustion-engined Berlingos were once again classed as cars - removing the drawbacks mentioned - and were once again offered in both five- and seven-seat formats. However, it's not entirely clear when that change was made. For safety, avoid examples from around this era, or at least make sure your prospective purchase has no bulkhead, and check the logbook for the vehicle's tax status.
- If you’re buying on a budget: Got family responsibilities or perhaps a passion for loading up mountain bikes and heading off for a dirty weekend? If so, you will probably want a Plus model in the smaller M body style with the 101bhp diesel engine. It isn’t remotely quick, but it’s the least expensive Berlingo, setting you back around £24,000 at the time of writing. The diesel is £600 pricier than the petrol engine, but the extra torque it provides will likely save you money on fuel in the long run, as you won’t have to rev the engine so hard.
- If you intend to restrict your Berlingo to lighter activities: For empty-nesters, or those who haven’t the remotest intention of climbing every mountain and fording every stream, the 109bhp 1.2-litre Puretech petrol engine will be just the job. Do bear in mind that Berlingo’s petrol engines are three-cylinder units, so although they are smooth and quiet at lower revs, they do get quite buzzy and vocal when you work them.
- If you need all the space you can muster: The seven-seat XL version of the Berlingo is the go-to choice. Sure, there will be moments where you’ll ask yourself if it was truly necessary to buy such a big box-on-wheels, but that extra practicality will be worth it every once in a while.
