Samsung killed Galaxy S26 upgrades to avoid a price hike – leaks say it didn’t work

Ben Schoon | Feb 5 2026 - 12:05 pm PT

Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series was expected to deliver on a few key upgrades that were long overdue, but that all went out the window last year when Samsung apparently decided to go all-in on avoiding a price hike. Despite killing those upgrades, though, leaks suggest that the price is going up anyway.

For the past few years, Samsung’s Galaxy S series has felt relatively static. A design tweak here, a new spec there, but the evolution from Galaxy S22 to the Galaxy S25 feels pretty uneventful, as shown by the Ultra phones especially.

It was expected that, finally, the Galaxy S26 series would be different.

Early leaks of Samsung’s new phones first hit the web in the late Summer months of 2025, revealing that Samsung would ditch the middle-child Plus device and instead invest in its thinner “Edge,” while also bringing some needed upgrades to a compact “Pro” and also improving on the Galaxy S26 Ultra too. There were rumblings of Qi2 support, upgraded cameras, and a lot more. Here’s a quick list of upgrades Samsung supposedly had planned at one point or another:

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While there are still some upgrades – the Galaxy S26 Ultra is thinner, wireless charging might be faster – a lot of what was planned seems to have gone out the window.

The reason for that, reports have claimed, is that Samsung saw Apple release the iPhone 17 series without a price hike, and immediately turned its goal to cost-cutting for the sake of matching that. It was reported in November that Samsung had scrapped its original plans following Apple’s announcement, and everything we’ve heard in the months since lines up with that, including a rushed Galaxy S26+ and an overall lineup that seems virtually unchanged from what came before.

Some of the only notable changes include:

It’s hardly the major upgrade we were all hoping for.

But at least it kept the price in check, right?

Wrong, say the latest leaks. Galaxy S26 series price leaks have been a bit all over the place, with a January rumor suggesting the Galaxy S26 would now start at €1,049 and the Galaxy S26 Ultra at €1,399 in Sweden. That’d be an increase of €100 for the base Galaxy S26. Dealabs more recently reports that the Galaxy S26 series will see some minor price bumps in France, less than that of what the previous rumor suggested, with the base Galaxy S26 rising by €40 over the 256GB Galaxy S25, the Galaxy S26+ jumping up by €100, and the base Galaxy S26 Ultra (256GB) being unchanged, while all higher storage tiers would rise by around €100 compared to the last generation across the board.

Storage	Galaxy S25	Galaxy S26	Galaxy S25+	Galaxy S26+	Galaxy S25 Ultra	Galaxy S26 Ultra
256GB	€959	€999	€1,169	€1,269	€1,469	€1,469
512GB	€1,079	€1,199	€1,289	€1,469	€1,589	€1,669
1TB	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	€1,829	€1,969

It’s hard to say how these prices might translate to other regions, but given the track record of the leaker here and how prices in France are generally reflected in other markets, it’s safe to say that a lot of Galaxy S26 buyers will be looking at a price hike of some kind – it’s also not the first time we’ve heard this. And, while none of them are major, it’s a tough pill to swallow considering there’s virtually nothing to show for that higher price tag.

As our Will Sattelberg explained, buying a new phone in 2026 is going to suck.

Of course, a lot of this comes down to the ongoing volatility of the tech industry as a whole, especially in regards to memory, but that doesn’t really take away the sting here. It’s pretty obvious that Samsung had big plans and, while keeping its prices in check is a noble goal, the end result here just feels like a lose-lose situation.

What do you think?