Samsung Raises Galaxy S26 Prices by $100 Seven Months After Launch; the 1TB Ultra Is Now $1,999.99

The Galaxy S26 now starts at $999.99 in the US, with matching increases in Europe, the UK, Canada and India. The Galaxy S26 FE and Samsung's foldables keep their prices.

Phones normally get cheaper as they age. On October 1, 2026, Samsung moved the Galaxy S26 family the other way: every model on its US store now costs $100 more than it did the day before, seven months after the phones went on sale. The base Galaxy S26 with 256 GB of storage went from $899.99 to $999.99, the Galaxy S26+ from $1,099.99 to $1,199.99, and the Galaxy S26 Ultra from $1,299.99 to $1,399.99. Android Authority, which spotted the change on Samsung's US site, lists the same $100 step on the 512 GB versions.

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Samsung Galaxy S26 specs →YouTube ↗

The one exception is the top of the range. The 1TB Galaxy S26 Ultra rose by $200, from $1,799.99 to $1,999.99, which puts a slab phone from Samsung a cent under $2,000 for the first time. The 512 GB models now sit at $1,199.99 for the S26, $1,399.99 for the S26+ and $1,599.99 for the Ultra. In practice the increase is not something you can avoid by picking a different storage size: the gap between tiers is unchanged, so the whole ladder simply moved up a rung.

The US is not a special case. GSMArena's price tracking on October 1 shows the same pattern in other markets: €100 more across mainland Europe, with the base S26 going from €1,000 to €1,100; £80 more in the UK; C$150 more in Canada; and ₹15,000 more in India. In each of those markets the 1TB Ultra took a larger hit, €230 in Europe and £330 in the UK. Tech-ish reports that prices rose in South Korea on the same day.

The reason given is memory. Android Authority attributes the change to a global shortage of memory components, and Tech-ish reports that DRAM, the working memory in every phone, has doubled in price in the six months since the S26 launched, as chipmakers shift production toward the high-bandwidth memory that AI data centres buy. That also explains why the 1TB model rose the most: it is the version with the most flash storage in it. Samsung had not published a statement by October 1; Engadget said it had asked the company for clarification.

This is the second time memory costs have landed on S26 buyers. The series was announced on February 25, 2026 and went on sale on March 11 at prices that were already higher than the Galaxy S25's, and Tech-ish quotes Samsung's chief operating officer saying at the time that the memory shortage alone made a significant contribution to that price. Engadget adds a detail that shows how hard the squeeze has been: Samsung's mobile division posted its first-ever loss in the second quarter of 2026, which it attributed to elevated memory prices, even with the S26 selling at the higher launch price.

Two things did not change, and both matter if you are shopping this month. GSMArena notes that the Galaxy S26 FE kept its price, and Tech-ish reports the same for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Samsung's other foldables. With the FE still at $699, the step up to a regular Galaxy S26 is now $300 rather than $200, which makes the cheaper phone a stronger default for anyone who was undecided between the two. Android Authority also found the old pricing still showing on some Amazon listings on October 1, with the warning that those may not last.

For someone who was about to buy, the practical advice is narrow but useful. Samsung's list price is the number that carrier and trade-in offers are calculated from, so a $100 increase can be absorbed entirely by a promotion or left fully in place, depending on the week; compare the final figure, not the discount. Retailers that have not yet repriced their stock are the obvious first place to look. And if the phone you have still works, there is no reason to rush: nothing about the hardware changed on October 1, only what it costs.

What this does not tell us is where prices go next. Samsung has not said whether the increase is temporary or whether it applies to phones still to come, and memory prices are set by a market that phone buyers have no view into. The safest reading is the plain one: as of October 1, 2026, a Galaxy S26 costs $999.99, and the era of waiting six months for a flagship to get cheaper has, for this generation at least, been reversed.

Original coverage: Samsung raises Galaxy S26 series prices by $100