Samsung’s Galaxy S26 price hikes have arrived, and the Ultra hurts most

The long-dreaded price hikes have finally arrived for Samsung’s flagship phones. Nearly every Galaxy S26 model is now $100 more expensive on Samsung’s U.S. website, while the 1TB Galaxy S26 Ultra has received an even nastier $200 increase, pushing its price all the way up to $1,999.99.

As disappointing as the increases are, they are hardly coming out of nowhere. Samsung has spent months warning that rising memory and storage costs were putting pressure on its device business, with the company expecting the shortage to get even worse in 2027 and potentially linger through 2028.

Samsung told us this was coming

The regular Galaxy S26 now starts at $999.99, while the Galaxy S26 Plus has climbed to $1,199.99. If you want the Galaxy S26 Ultra, the cheapest version will now set you back $1,399.99. Every 256GB and 512GB configuration has gone up by $100, leaving the fully loaded 1TB Ultra as the unfortunate outlier with its $200 bump.

Memory is largely to blame here. Samsung said during its second-quarter earnings call that demand continues to run ahead of supply, while AI data centers are gobbling up huge amounts of memory capacity. Higher component prices have been great news for Samsung’s semiconductor business, but the company has also admitted that the same costs are hurting its mobile division.

Samsung is hardly alone in passing some of that pain along. Apple recently raised the prices of several existing iPhones by $100, including the iPhone 16, iPhone 17, and iPhone Air. The iPhone 18 Pro also arrived $100 above its predecessor.

The Galaxy S27 could hurt even more

Unfortunately, anyone thinking about simply waiting for Samsung’s next flagships may not get much relief. A recent leak claims the Galaxy S27 lineup could see another round of increases, with higher-storage models potentially taking an even bigger hit.

Rising NAND flash prices and next-generation LPDDR6 memory are reportedly behind the expected increases. Samsung has not finalized Galaxy S27 pricing yet, but after months of warnings followed by an actual S26 price hike, the prospect of paying even more next year no longer sounds far-fetched.