diff --git a/pandas/io/parsers/readers.py b/pandas/io/parsers/readers.py
index 4fbd71ed03662..53d06272a771a 100644
--- a/pandas/io/parsers/readers.py
+++ b/pandas/io/parsers/readers.py
@@ -679,6 +679,24 @@ def _read(
             kwds["parse_dates"] = False
         else:
             kwds["parse_dates"] = True
+    # 🆕 Handle engine='polars'
+    if kwds.get("engine") == "polars":
+        try:
+            import polars as pl
+        except ImportError:
+            raise ImportError(
+                "Polars is not installed. Please install it with 'pip install polars'."
+            )
+
+        pl_args = {}
+        if "nrows" in kwds:
+            pl_args["n_rows"] = kwds["nrows"]
+        if "encoding" in kwds:
+            pl_args["encoding"] = kwds["encoding"]
+
+        df = pl.read_csv(filepath_or_buffer, **pl_args)
+        return df.to_pandas()
+
 
     # Extract some of the arguments (pass chunksize on).
     iterator = kwds.get("iterator", False)
@@ -1791,6 +1809,9 @@ def _refine_defaults_read(
         kwds["delimiter"] = delimiter
 
     if engine is not None:
+        if engine not in ["c", "python", "pyarrow", "polars"]:
+            raise ValueError(f"Unknown engine: {engine}")
+        kwds["engine"] = engine
         kwds["engine_specified"] = True
     else:
         kwds["engine"] = "c"
diff --git a/pandas/io/parsers/test_read_csv_polars.py b/pandas/io/parsers/test_read_csv_polars.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..2647915d75782
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pandas/io/parsers/test_read_csv_polars.py
@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+import pytest
+
+def test_read_csv_with_polars(tmp_path):
+    pl = pytest.importorskip("polars")
+    pd = pytest.importorskip("pandas")
+
+    file = tmp_path / "data.csv"
+    file.write_text("a,b\n1,2\n3,4")
+
+    df = pd.read_csv(file, engine="polars")
+    assert df.shape == (2, 2)
+    assert list(df.columns) == ["a", "b"]