This story was updated on June 13th with new U.S. Galaxy S26 Ultra pricing information.
If you're a regular reader you may recall that one of Samsung's recent Galaxy S26 Ultra promotions, which knocked $200 off the device, didn't match up to an equivalent deal at the same time a year before.
We expected this to happen. Profits are squeezed because of the RAM crisis and Samsung has responded with price increases and weaker deals. Except a couple of recent promotions show that the Korean company is fighting to stay competitive on Galaxy S26 Ultra pricing.
The latest one, a free pair of £219 ($249.99 in the U.S.) Galaxy Buds 4 Pro, is one of its best offers yet and hints at the company's pricing strategy for the rest of the year.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra now comes with a free pair of Galaxy Buds 4 Pro. (Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
NurPhoto via Getty Images
Samsung is giving away a free pair of Galaxy Buds 4 Pro with every Galaxy S26 Ultra purchase in the U.K. if the code "S26UP" is used at checkout (spotted by SamMobile). I tried it and it works, but I'm not sure how long it will last for.
That freebie is stacked with a straight £100 off ($134) and a further £200 ($268) prepaid Mastercard that’s loaded on to your Samsung Wallet. Altogether that deal is worth £519 ($696) and represents one of Samsung's more serious promotions so far for the Galaxy S26 Ultra.
It's not uncommon for Samsung to give away free hardware with its flagship phones in the U.K. At least it wasn't. But as the RAM crisis has taken hold, I've seen fewer (if any) free laptops, tablets, watches and earbuds, until now.
Clearly, Samsung is prioritising keeping its flagship as competitively priced as possible (and perhaps trying to steal a bit of the WWDC limelight this week) despite battling rising manufacturing costs.
That is obvious in Samsung keeping the price of the Galaxy S26 series flat in the U.S. at launch, while raising prices for the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Galaxy S25 Edge and potentially the upcoming Galaxy A27 if leaks are accurate.
A recent offer that knocked a surprise $500 off the Galaxy S26 Ultra also proves that the Korean company is protecting its prized asset. Pre-Galaxy S26 launch leaks suggested the company would do exactly this.
It’s not all rosy, some freebies and offers have disappeared this year. A free Perplexity Pro subscription that was available to all Samsung Galaxy users in 2025 has expired, the Korean company confirmed to me.
The "APP5" discount code that knocked a further 5% off purchases through the Samsung Shop app is also gone. Three months free of Amazon Music was briefly bundled with the Galaxy S26 series, but that has disappeared too.
Some of the deals have been weaker, too. A promotion on May 12th was $30 less than the equivalent Galaxy S25 Ultra deal from the same period last year.
But a Memorial Day sale made amends. The Galaxy S26 Ultra price dropped to $1,049.99, knocking $250 off and beating the equivalently timed S25 Ultra deal from 2025. Then came the $999.99 promotion, which was $500 off with a free storage upgrade from 256GB to 512GB. That deal only $50 more than the Galaxy S25 Ultra's best price, $849.99, on Black Friday.
What can Galaxy phone buyers learn from this? A holiday is the best time to buy your hardware, even in a time of rising prices.
This is a Father’s Day promotion. The $250 and $500 discounts were in or around Memorial Day, too. So the pattern is clear: Samsung is concentrating its best deals on major shopping holidays rather than rolling out modest discounts throughout the year. Prime Day and Black Friday will almost certainly follow the same logic. There may be some World Cup price cuts too.
For buyers, that means waiting for a random sale is less likely to pay off than it used to. Waiting for the next public holiday almost certainly will.
The real test comes in November. Can Samsung match the $850 Galaxy S25 Ultra price from last year with the RAM crisis in the background? Current evidence suggests it could well do. If you've been waiting for the right moment, the pattern now tells you exactly when that moment is.
While U.K. buyers get the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro for free, Samsung’s U.S. Father's Day promotion does things slightly differently but the outcome is largely the same.
The Galaxy S26 Ultra (256GB) is currently $1,099.99, down from $1,299.99. That’s a straight $200 off if you don’t trade in a device. If you do, the trade-in credit replaces that $200 saving entirely, climbing to up to $720 (depending on your old device’s condition and model, of course).
On top of the $200 saving, the code “PAYPAL150” knocks a further $150 off at checkout, bringing the no-trade-in price down to $949.99. That’s $50 cheaper than Samsung’s recent $999.99 promotion, and $100 more than the best price ever offered on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. I suspect Samsung is saving it’s rock bottom Galaxy S26 pricing for Black Friday, as it did with last year’s flagship.
That $949.99 price is only available without a trade-in. If you trade in an eligible device instead, you get the trade-in credit (up to $720) rather than the PAYPAL150 discount, since the two can't be combined. There's also a $100 Samsung Credit toward accessories either way, which brings the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro down to $125 from $249.99,.
So while the U.K. deal hands you the Buds 4 Pro outright, the U.S. version gets you most of the way there through the credit, on top of a meaningful price cut on the phone itself. Interestingly, British shoppers have the better deal out of the two: the U.K. promotion is worth roughly £519 (about $695) in total value, compared to $450 in the U.S., a gap of around $245.
Despite the difference in size, Samsung’s new U.S. promotion confirms the same underlying pattern: even with the RAM crisis squeezing margins, holidays remain the time to buy and beat rising hardware prices.
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