Japan Car of the Year 2026-2027 nominates 33 cars on 27 October, 10 Best Cars due on 2 November

The Japan Car of the Year executive committee put out its nominee list for the 2026-2027 award on 27 October 2026. There are 33 cars on it. Of those, 12 are Japanese and 21 are imports, which is the clearest signal yet of how far the Japanese market has opened up to outside brands, including Chinese ones.

To be eligible, a car had to be announced or go on sale in Japan between 1 November 2025 and 31 October 2026. That window is set out in the award's own rules, and it is why some cars Indian readers have already seen elsewhere turn up here as fresh contenders.

The names reported from the announcement include the new Mazda CX-5, the Toyota RAV4, the Nissan Elgrand and the Honda Super One. Car Watch's report also lists the Tesla Model Y L and the Porsche Cayenne Electric among the imports, alongside BYD, Citroen and Hyundai entries. Other nominees carried in the Japanese coverage are the Suzuki e SKY, Japan's first kei-class electric car, the Toyota Land Cruiser FJ, the Toyota bZ4X Touring, the Subaru Trailseeker, the Nissan Kicks and the Honda CR-V. Mercedes-Benz's CLA and Volvo's ES90 and EX90 are in the import pool.

How the vote actually works

JCOTY is one of the more transparent awards on this beat. The selection committee is capped at 60 members, drawn from motoring journalists, racing drivers, magazine editors and other public figures who follow cars closely.

The first vote cuts the 33 down to the 10 Best Cars, which will be announced on 2 November on the award's YouTube channel. A test drive and press day follows on 18 November, so jurors get seat time in the finalists before the decisive round. The final selection meeting and ceremony are on 3 December.

That final round uses what the organisers call the 101-point method. Every juror has to rank all ten finalists, handing out 25, 18, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and 1 point from first to tenth. The total per juror is 101 points. The change matters: under the older system a juror picked only three cars and the rest got nothing, which let a narrow fan base carry a car. Forcing a full ranking rewards the car that nobody puts last. The department awards for Import, Design and Technology use a smaller 16-point spread of 10, 4 and 2 across three cars.

What this means for the Indian awards season

India's own cycle has just finished. At the 2026 Indian Car of the Year announcement, the Maruti Suzuki Victoris won, with the Skoda Kylaq second and the Mahindra XEV 9e third. The Volkswagen Golf GTI took Premium Car of the Year ahead of the Toyota Camry, and the XEV 9e also took Green Car of the Year. ICOTY's jury is a smaller group of senior Indian motoring journalists, roughly 20 strong, from titles including evo India, Motoring World, CarWale, Car India, Auto Today, Overdrive and autoX.

The contrast is instructive. ICOTY is judged by a tight circle of working journalists. JCOTY spreads the call across a much wider committee and publishes every juror's score sheet afterwards. Neither approach is automatically fairer, but the Japanese one makes it far harder to argue that a winner came out of nowhere. If the 10 Best Cars list on 2 November leans heavily imported, that will be the story.

Sources

• Japan Car of the Year official site
• What is Japan Car of the Year: rules and selection method
• Car Watch via Yahoo News: 33 nominees decided for JCOTY 2026-2027
• carview!: JCOTY 2026-2027 announces all 33 nominees, 10 Best Cars on 2 November
• Japan Car of the Year 2026-2027 nominee list and schedule explained
• evo India: Maruti Suzuki Victoris wins 2026 Indian Car of the Year