Samsung suddenly jacks up the prices of Galaxy S26 phones

Most got a $100 increase while the 1TB Galaxy S26 Ultra jumped up by $200 to $2,000.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Samsung has increased the prices of its Galaxy S26, S26+ and S26 Ultra phones by at least $100 on its website, even though most configurations were already more expensive than last year's equivalents when they debuted in March. The S26 FE, which the company released a month ago, is the only one of the current slate-style smartphones that avoided a sudden price increase.

Unless you go with an FE or wait for a sale (Black Friday is fast approaching and Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days is next week), it'll now cost you at least $1,000 to pick up a Galaxy S26 phone. That's the price for the base model with 256GB of storage, meaning that particular flavor of the Galaxy S26 is now $200 more than its Galaxy S25 equivalent.

If you want a Galaxy S26 with 512GB of storage, that'll now run you $1,200. The Galaxy S26+ is $1,200 for 256GB of storage and $1,400 for the 512GB variant. As for the Galaxy S26 Ultra, you'll need to pay $1,400 for 256GB of storage, $1,600 for 512GB and $2,000 for 1TB. That last one stands out since Samsung increased the price by $200, rather than $100 for the other variants.

Even though S26 prices were higher and its revenue grew overall, Samsung's mobile division posted its first-ever loss for the April-June quarter of this year. It pinned a decline in operating profit on higher costs and components like RAM and storage becoming more expensive. That's most likely why the company jacked up the S26 prices again. (Engadget has contacted Samsung for clarification).

On the contrary, Samsung's chip division is doing gangbusters. It helped drive the company overall to all-time high quarterly revenue and operating profit in its second fiscal quarter.

This may not be the end of Samsung's smartphone price hikes, either. Reports suggest the company may make storage upgrades even more expensive in the S27 lineup.