Samsung held the Galaxy Unpacked 2026 event on February 25 at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. The Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra are now official. Pre-orders are open today, February 26. Units ship March 11. The S26 Ultra starts at $1,299, the S26+ at $1,099, and the S26 at $899.
TM Roh, Samsung's President and CEO, opened the event and set the frame for every announcement that followed. "There is still a gap between what AI promises and what you actually experience. That's where Galaxy keeps pushing forward," Roh said on stage. He laid out three pillars Samsung is building toward: Reach, Openness, and Confidence, with AI positioned as the infrastructure layer beneath all three.
Won-Joon Choi, Samsung's COO, then made the structural declaration that ran through every product announcement at Unpacked. "We must evolve from a traditional Operating System to an intelligent Operating System, where AI is integrated into every layer," Choi said on stage. Samsung confirmed this AI OS is being built in direct partnership with Google and the Android team.
Here is every AI announcement from the event:
1. Now Brief
Rachel Roberts, from Samsung's Product Management led the Galaxy AI demonstrations on stage at Unpacked, opened with Now Brief. Galaxy AI generates a personalized morning overview covering your weather, schedule, and energy level, and automatically pulls in reservations and event details it finds inside your notification history, including ones never manually added to your calendar.
Roberts demonstrated this live, showing a restaurant booking Galaxy AI had already surfaced on her behalf. "I completely forgot to put this in my calendar," she said on stage. "But Galaxy AI remembered the confirmation in my notifications and automatically reminded me."
2. Now Nudge
Roberts then introduced Now Nudge. While you are inside a chat, Galaxy AI reads the live context of the conversation and surfaces what you need without you leaving the app. A friend texts asking for photos from last weekend, Galaxy AI finds the relevant images and brings them up inside the chat. Someone proposes dinner, your calendar appears inline so you can check availability and reply in seconds without switching apps. "Galaxy AI understands the context and does the work for you," Roberts said during the demonstration.
3. AI Call Screening
Roberts announced that Galaxy AI can now take calls you do not answer. Once the call ends, Galaxy AI delivers a plain-language summary covering who called, what they wanted, and what needs your attention versus what can wait. "For those calls you can't get to, or the ones you don't want to get to," she said on stage, "Galaxy AI can give you a clear, simple summary of who called and what they wanted."
4. A Rebuilt Bixby
Roberts walked through the full rebuild of Bixby at Unpacked. The new Bixby handles device navigation through plain conversation. Ask it how to wirelessly charge another device, and it takes you there directly. Beyond device control, Bixby can now retrieve and display real-time, up-to-date information directly inside the conversation, without opening a browser or switching apps.
"We didn't just make Bixby smarter inside your phone," she said on stage. "We added a brand-new capability that goes beyond device control. Now Bixby can bring you up-to-date information directly in the conversation, keeping you in your flow without having to open another app."
5. Samsung Browser × Perplexity: Ask AI
Roberts announced that starting with the Galaxy S26 series, Samsung Browser is partnering with Perplexity to bring a built-in AI research tool called Ask AI directly into the browser. Ask AI reads across all open tabs and recent browsing history and answers questions through conversational AI, inside the browser, without a separate app or switching between windows.
"What started off as a quick search turns into multiple open tabs, comparing different sites, reading reviews, jumping back and forth," Roberts said on stage. Ask AI is built to collapse that entire process into one conversation.
6. Circle to Search: Now Multi-Object
Roberts introduced the multi-object upgrade to Circle to Search, with Sameer Samat, President of the Android Ecosystem at Google, joining on stage to give the feature its full context. "Circle to Search has completely changed how people interact with nearly 600 million Android devices," Samat said.
On the S26 series, you can now circle multiple objects in a single frame at the same time. Circle an entire outfit, every piece of it, and find all of them in one search instead of hunting item by item.
7. Gemini 3: Agentic AI and the AI OS
Samat also announce Gemini 3 as the core agentic engine now built into the Galaxy S26 series, embedded directly into what Samsung and Google are calling an AI OS. Samat explained the architecture on stage: Android launches the target app in a virtual background window, and Gemini 3 uses its reasoning and multimodal capabilities to navigate that app and complete the task exactly as a user would, while the phone stays fully usable for anything else.
He demonstrated it by reading a family group chat full of conflicting food orders, building a full cart on DoorDash, and alerting him only to confirm before anything was submitted. "I just call it, getting stuff done," Samat said.
Users can watch every step Gemini takes in real time before confirming. Gemini 3 agentic AI is rolling out as an early preview on the S26, initially supporting DoorDash and Grubhub, with more apps to follow.
8. Personal Data Engine
Choi introduced the Personal Data Engine on stage as the on-device backbone powering Now Brief, Now Nudge, and Gemini 3's agentic capabilities. The Personal Data Engine converts scattered data across your device, covering messages, calendar, notifications, and app activity, into structured, AI-readable context that Galaxy AI can act on in real time.
"Your phone is your most personal device, and it has the potential to help you in ways no other device can," Choi said on stage. "An AI phone needs to offer suggestions that feel truly personal and relevant."
9. KEEP and Knox Vault: AI Security Architecture
Choi introduced KEEP alongside the Personal Data Engine at Unpacked. KEEP maintains digital walls between apps so only verified services gain access to your personal data. Underneath KEEP sits Samsung Knox Vault, physically built into the hardware and isolated from the main system, protecting passwords, security keys, and biometrics independently.
"Even if the main software is attacked, the Vault remains locked," Choi said on stage. For Galaxy AI features that process data in the cloud, Choi stated the rule directly: "Your data is processed to deliver an answer and then deleted."
10. AI-Enhanced Nightography Video
Mason Page, from Samsung's Product Marketing team, who led the camera section of Unpacked, announced that the S26 Ultra's processor now identifies the unique sensor characteristics of each individual camera independently, using that understanding to reduce grain more precisely and keep facial detail sharp in low-light video.
Film director Monique Yvonne, who shot a short film on the S26 Ultra at night in Seoul, shared a clip about the result. "Night scenes normally require a ton of lighting. But I was super impressed by the Galaxy S26 Ultra, picking up clean and beautiful shots in extremely dark environments without any grain. This phone genuinely feels like having a cinema camera in your hand," Monique Yvonne said in the video.
11. Photo Assist
Mason Page introduced Photo Assist as the step beyond AI Eraser. Where Eraser removes unwanted elements, Photo Assist adds what was not there. Describe what you want, your pet from a separate photo merged into the current shot, a missing bite restored in a food image, or an entirely different outfit generated on a subject, and Galaxy AI completes it.
Every AI-generated edit is tagged inside the image for transparency. "It doesn't just let you remove what was there," Page said on stage. "It helps you add what should have been there."
12. AI Style Transformations and Creative Studio
Page announced that any photo on the S26 series can now be transformed on-device into a watercolor painting, retro anime, or 3D toon style, with no app download and no external upload required.
Creative Studio, also announced at Unpacked, lets users generate sticker collections from their photos and custom AI-generated wallpapers. "Galaxy AI turns editing into something effortless, fun, and instantly share-worthy," Mason Page said on stage.
13. AI Document Scanning
Page demonstrated Galaxy AI's upgraded document scanning at Unpacked. Galaxy AI detects when you are trying to capture a document, automatically smooths wrinkles and folded corners, removes your finger from the frame, and combines multiple pages into a single PDF.
"You just point, capture, and go," Mason Page said on stage. "Galaxy AI takes care of the rest, without having to download any separate apps."
14. Hands-Free AI Wake on Galaxy Buds4
Andrew Short, from Samsung's Product Management team who led the Galaxy Buds4 presentation at Unpacked, announced that the Buds4 now supports a voice-wake trigger for your AI agent, completely hands-free, without touching your phone.
Galaxy Buds4 Pro starts at $249. Galaxy Buds4 at $179. Both ship March 11 alongside the S26 series.
Damilare Odedina
