Samsung Galaxy S26 launch event confirmed – this is when Samsung's new Android phone flagships are coming

Samsung has officially sent out invitations for Galaxy Unpacked, the blockbuster show that will see the launch of Samsung's next Galaxy phones. In line with speculation, the event will take place on 25 February in San Francisco.

It's more than just an invitation to the press, as in line with previous events, the entire thing will be streamed on YouTube, so that everyone can follow along and see what's in store for the Galaxy S26 family of phones.

The invitation outs AI at its core, with the Galaxy AI star logo in a rolling box that opens and lets them out. It follows on from Samsung teasing the new devices referring to them as "AI phone" rather than "smartphone".

The Samsung Galaxy S26 family of phones is expected to consist of the Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26 Plus and Galaxy S26 Ultra. It was initially thought that Samsung would be replacing the Plus model with the Galaxy S26 Edge – a slimmer model – but it's said that reception of the 2025 model was rather muted and plans reverted back to the traditional selection.

All of the models have been comprehensively leaked, showing a minor change to the design that puts the rear cameras on a raised island, but with the overall design remaining much the same.

Invitation for Galaxy Unpacked February 2026 | Samsung - YouTube

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What to expect from the Samsung Galaxy S26 family

Headline features include a move to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 – presumably in the "for Galaxy" guise with a slightly higher clock speed on some of the cores – although customers in Europe can expect the Exynos 2600 to power some of the devices.

While most will be clamouring for the new Snapdragon hardware, there's something a little more interesting about the Exynos 2600, because it moves to a 2nm chip. That could provide greater efficiencies than the Snapdragon hardware.

Elsewhere, it's expected that the hardware will be much the same as previous devices. There's been a great deal of speculation about wireless charging, with initial thoughts that Samsung might include the magnets for Qi2.2 wireless charging, but that appears not to be the case.

At any rate, it looks like charging speeds could be increased, but not by much.

Elsewhere, the camera experience is expected to be much the same as it was before.

That leaves the software, with the new models expected to launch on One UI 8.5. That's going to sit on Android 16, but most of the focus is likely to be on AI features.

Most of Samsung's teasing of the forthcoming phones has focused on AI, continuing the focus of the last couple of years. However, the AI experience doesn't seem to have yielded meaningful results, with Google offering Gemini as the voice assistant as well as integrated into Google's own apps and services.

Samsung will be looking to bring innovation to the AI space, which has so far been based around summaries, translation, photo editing and image creation. The company has said that AI will become "truly personal and adaptive".

All will be revealed on 25 February.