Deere Unveils Next-Gen Combine Front-End Equipment, Expanded Automation, Productivity Enhancements

Mar 01, 2025

Karen Jones is the machinery executive editor at Successful Farming and Agriculture.com. She joined the Successful Farming team in 2023 following a 19-year career on the communications team of an agricultural cooperative.

John Deere

To help farmers capture as much crop as possible during harvest, John Deere has released new combine headers, including a three-piece hinge draper reel system and an 18-row corn head with 30-inch spacing.

“Our goal is to ensure John Deere combines are as productive as possible, and that all starts with the header,” said Bergen Nelson, go-to-market manager for harvest equipment. “These headers are built to consistently feed the combine, keeping harvest productive and efficient. We know that how the crop is taken off the field is as important as how the field is left behind, and all that starts with the front end.”

For model year 2026, Deere introduced a new three-piece cam reel with dense pack fingers. The reel is engineered for high-performance harvesting, particularly in challenging crops such as pulses and edibles, which have a shorter stature and lower podding. Its design helps recover down and lodged crops, minimizing grain loss and increasing productivity. The dense pack fingers have 32% more tines compared with previous flip-over reels, providing an efficient material sweep from the knife to maximize grain capture. With an ability to maintain a consistent reel-to-knife relationship, the three-piece reel helps enhance feeding capacity.

John Deere

The new CF18 30 is an 18-row, 30-inch-spaced folding corn head — the industry’s first folding corn head with this row size and spacing. The header is designed for growers to match the frame width of 36-row planters to eliminate having to harvest a wide or narrow “guess” row. The CF18 30 can decrease the number of passes by 11% per quarter section, compared with the CF16 30. The CF18 30 is compatible with StalkMaster and is engineered for use with the Deere X9 combine series.

John Deere

Updates to the combine’s automation system are designed to give operators new harvesting-related functionality.

“These new updates are designed with farmer input to help unlock the full potential of the John Deere combine,” Nelson said. “These updates are designed to help farmers during harvest — from beginning to end. From improving the grain-unloading experience to solutions that help increase the combine working time, these updates are designed to help farmers work in those often-tight harvest windows.”

Predictive Ground Speed Automation — a part of the ultimate technology package — was introduced with the model year 2025 combines and incorporates predictive inputs measuring crop variability ahead of the combine for controlling ground speed. Two factory-mounted stereo cameras look ahead and measure crop height and stay in front of the cutter bar. Satellite views work with the John Deere Operations Center to generate predictive yield maps based on midseason biomass results. Together, these systems create a smoother harvesting experience, which allows less skilled operators to maintain grain quality.

Customer feedback provided direction for these ground speed updates:

John Deere

Harvest Settings Automation automatically sets concave clearance, fan speed, rotor speed, sieve clearance and chaffer clearance, all based on the combine model, crop type, and geolocation.

Updates include:

In addition to updates in automation, the model year 2026 release also includes improvements designed to enhance productivity with less operator intervention. These updates particularly benefit less experienced operators.

Harvest updates available through the John Deere Operations Center give operators at-a-glance views of their farm on their mobile device to help make in-field decisions to manage harvest activity.

In addition to updates in automation, Deere introduced improvements to its combines. All changes are based on customer input.

To help ensure reliable capture of the needed field and machine data, John Deere also offers JDLink Boost, a satellite connectivity solution to ensure seamless work in fields with little to no cellular coverage. This is a field-installed kit with customized harnesses that allows machines to transmit data in real time to and from the Operations Center across machines, helping support the advanced automation and technologies, and providing information for farmers to better manage their fleets. This feature also better supports remote display access, reducing the time it can take to diagnose a machine issue.

For more information, contact your local John Deere dealer or visit deere.com.