Wow, the Samsung Galaxy S26 launch date leaks and is a short, sharp shock

Samsung has been shifting its launch dates around recently and with the Samsung Galaxy S26 on the horizon (but some way in the distance), it looks like the flagship series will arrive later than the last couple of years.

Samsung went early for the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S25, launching in January. In previous years, the company had used a February date, meaning its phones were announced before Mobile World Congress at the end of the month. Even earlier than that, Galaxy Unpacked was held in Barcelona alongside the MWC show – and very much dominated headlines.

But according to Korean news site Money Today (via 9to5Google), the date for the next Samsung Galaxy Unpacked will be going back a step. It's claimed that the new phones will be announced on 25 February in San Francisco.

That will see the launch of the new Galaxy S26 series of devices, with the source saying that San Francisco was chosen because it's a centre of AI technology and Samsung continues to push the message that it's an AI phone.

No other details are given right now, but we wouldn't expect confirmation of the event until well into January or even February 2026. Samsung is likely to start the year announcing new television and audio hardware around CES in January, before moving onto its mobile devices.

In the middle of this mix, it's expected that the Exynos 2600 will be announced too – and that could be significant.

Samsung's S26 could usher in a change

Over the past couple of months there has been a lot of speculation about the Galaxy S26 series. Early plans suggested that the entry-level model would be renamed "Pro", the Plus was be dropped in favour of the Galaxy S26 Edge, and that the Ultra would continue as the supreme flagship.

However, following the launch of the Galaxy S25 Edge and reported weak interest in the device, it's said that the development of a successor skinny phone has stopped and that we'll get the Plus instead. That might mean that the line-up of devices for 2026 is very much as it has been in the past.

One significant change is that there are reports that the entire family could be powered by the to-be-announced Exynos 2600. This new 2nm hardware from Samsung is reportedly more powerful than the Apple A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 and potentially outstrips the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

Exactly how Samsung will deploy its Exynos hardware remains to be seen: in the past, regions like the US and China stuck with Snapdragon, while Europe and other regions took Exynos.

So there could be some changes coming to Samsung's phones – not just the date that they will be announced, but the hardware that will power them too.