Two Audi stories ran this year that nobody put side by side. In July the brand revealed the Q9, the largest SUV it has ever built. In February, with no announcement at all, European production of the A8 ended. The second explains the first.
The Q9 is the flagship now
The Q9 sits above the Q8 and is aimed squarely at the BMW X7 and the Mercedes-Benz GLS. Three rows, seven seats, or six with two electrically adjustable ventilated chairs in the middle. The third-row backrests fold on their own electric controls. Towing capacity runs to 7,700 lb, about 3,493 kg.
Inside is what Audi calls the Digital Stage: an 11.9-inch instrument panel, a 14.5-inch central screen and a 10.9-inch passenger display. The Bang & Olufsen system runs 22 speakers, with drivers in the headrests and actuators in the front seats. Two Qi2.2 pads charge phones wirelessly and USB-C delivers up to 100 W.
Two details stand out. All four doors are electric — a first for Audi — opening from the key, the myAudi app, the MMI, the brake pedal or the seatbelt buckle, with obstacle detection. And the roof is roughly 1.5 square metres of glass in nine segments that switch to opaque, block over 99.5 per cent of UV, and darken by themselves when the car is parked.
What Audi has not published yet: powertrains, dimensions, boot volume or prices. The press material says final values arrive at the official start of communication.
The part that is actually news
The Q9 is built on the Premium Platform Combustion. A combustion platform, for the flagship, from the company that spent several years telling everyone its future was electric. Audi is not alone in quietly editing that promise — its parent company has been rewriting its own 2030 plan all year — but doing it with the biggest car in the range is a statement.
Meanwhile the A8, the car that was Audi’s flagship for thirty years, stopped. German order books closed earlier in 2026; D5 production in Europe ended in February. It survives in the United States into the 2027 model year, built down from existing component stock. Audi sold 1,406 of them in the US in 2025, which is the entire explanation in one number.
A successor, in 2030, built by Porsche
Nothing here is confirmed by Audi. What is reported — by Automotive News, with the timing from Heilbronner Stimme — is that Audi and Porsche are discussing building the next A8 at Porsche’s Leipzig plant alongside the Panamera, starting in 2030 at the earliest. That is a gap of at least three years with no Audi flagship sedan anywhere.
The reported car would move onto Porsche’s rear-drive MSB platform and drop its near-term electric plans for V6 and V8 plug-in hybrids. Porsche’s only on-record comment is that it is evaluating scenarios for the next-generation flagship sedan. Treat the rest as reporting, not announcement.
What it adds up to
Two reversals in one year. The flagship is now an SUV, and the flagship engine is petrol again — in a European market where electric only just edged ahead of petrol, and where the premium brands are still promising electric performance cars for 2027.
Audi’s own line is that buyers needing the space should look at the Q9. That is a stand-in, not a successor. If what you wanted was a long, low, quiet saloon, a seven-seat SUV with a 3.5-tonne tow rating is not it, and will not be until the end of the decade.