In summary:
- Tech Advisor reports that Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series appears set for a February 25th launch event, with retail availability expected by March 11th.
- Early Geekbench results show the S26+ and S26 Ultra running Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chips with strong performance scores exceeding 11,000 multi-core.
- Some regions like South Korea may face price increases due to rising RAM costs, though the US market is expected to avoid these hikes.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 smartphone series should hit shops on 11 March, according to one European source.
Recent weeks have seen various sources pointing to 25 February as the later-than-usual date for Samsung’s next big flagship smartphone announcement.
That date seems more assured than ever with the fresh claim from French website Dealabs that the Samsung Galaxy S26 series will hit shops on 11 March.
Such a date would fall precisely two weeks later than 25 February, which – as we’ve just discussed – is when everyone seems to believe Samsung will be holding its Unpacked launch event. That’s just the kind of gap that Samsung typically shoots for when it’s rolling out a major new phone, with the odd minor variation.
Last year’s Samsung Galaxy S25 series was announced on 22 January and released on 7 February 7 – a gap of 16 days. Before that, the Samsung Galaxy S24 had a precise 14-day gap between its announcement and rollout.
Luke Baker
The website confirms that the Samsung Galaxy S26 will indeed be announced on 25 February, at around 7PM French time. That’s 6PM in UK time.
Last week we heard that some regions could be in line for a price hike when the Samsung Galaxy S26 drops. Over in Samsung’s home country of South Korea, that price bump is said to range from 44,000 won (about £22) to 88,000 won (about £45), depending on the model.
These price hikes are reportedly down to the soaring price of RAM modules, which have doubled in the past year, and could rise by another 40% as 2026 rolls into its second half.
The US is expected to be shielded from these price hikes, being a crucial (and incredibly competitive) market for Samsung, but we await news of European pricing with baited breath.
Samsung Galaxy S26 benchmarks
In separate news, the Samsung Galaxy S26+ and Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra have appeared on the popular Geekbench benchmarking tool.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra (under the model number SM-S948) yielded a CPU single-core score of 3466 and a multi-core score of 11035. The Samsung Galaxy S26+ (SM-S942) achieved similar scores of 3378 and 11097, respectively.
That’s about what we’d expect for this generation of flagship phone, falling in line with the likes of the OnePlus 15 and the Honor Magic 8 Pro.
Both phones appear to be running on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC (backed by 12GB of RAM), which is to be expected given that these are US models. Global models of the Galaxy S26 and S26+ are expected to run on Samsung’s own Exynos 2600 chip, which could provide some slightly different results.
What’s interesting is that the Galaxy S26 Ultra doesn’t to be running at full whack. The two performance cores are listed as running at 4.19GHz, whereas previous implementations of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 have hit 4.61GHz. The Galaxy S26+, meanwhile, is running at a higher 4.74GHz. Curious.
Author: Jon Mundy, Contributor, Tech Advisor
Jon is a freelance journalist who got his start covering mobile games at the dawn of the App Store. He has since covered everything from smart home tech and laptops to food and culture, but always seems to return to his fascination with smartphones.