Qualcomm has officially announced the dates for Snapdragon Summit 2026 on Instagram. The event is set to take place in Maui, Hawaii from September 22 to 24. It's the annual event where Qualcomm unveils its next-generation Snapdragon flagship chipsets.
Samsung and Xiaomi phones may launch with them as usual
According to reports tied to Qualcomm’s announcement, the chipmaker may launch two new chips at the Snapdragon Summit 2026. The upcoming chips include the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro, both reportedly built on TSMC's 2-nanometer process node.
The Pro version, being the higher-clocked variant, is rumored to power Samsung's next generation of devices, including the Galaxy S27, Galaxy S27+, Galaxy S27 Pro, Galaxy S27 Ultra, and both the Galaxy Z Fold 9 and Z Fold 9 Ultra.
Interestingly, the standard S27 and S27+ might skip Snapdragon entirely in most markets. They'll run Samsung's own Exynos 2700 chip with side-by-side cooling, built on Samsung Foundry's second-generation 2nm node.
Xiaomi too has a longstanding pattern of being among the first manufacturers to launch a phone with Qualcomm's newest flagship chip. They usually beat Samsung to market by weeks or months. It's possible the next Xiaomi 18 phone will use one of the new chips.
See the tentative Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 specs
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 is rumored to have an eight-core CPU clocked up to 4.4GHz with an Adreno 845 GPU and 12MB of graphics memory. The Gen 6 Pro boosts clock speeds up to 5GHz, is paired with an Adreno 850 GPU and 18MB of graphics memory, with support for either LPDDR5X or the newer LPDDR6 RAM. The previous Gen 5 has a third generation Oryon CPU clocked at 4.74GHz, which is higher than the Gen 6.
The Gen 5 also uses an Adreno GPU with a 23% performance gain and 25% better ray tracing over its predecessor. The Gen 6 series reportedly moves to new Adreno 845 and Adreno 850 GPUs with 12MB and 18MB of graphics memory respectively.
Memory support is with LPDDR5X for the Gen 5 and the standard Gen 6, but the Gen 6 Pro is rumored to add support for the newer LPDDR6 standard. LPDDR6 has higher peak bandwidth than LPDDR5X, translating to faster data transfer between the chip and memory, and speeds up multiple processes on the device.
The biggest difference is that the 6 series reportedly moved to TSMC's 2nm process node. A smaller process node packs the transistors more densely onto the chip and each one is physically smaller and more efficient than on the previous 3nm node. It should shrink the chips and bring broader gains in performance and power efficiency beyond what the raw clock speeds are showing.
Qualcomm may also introduce two more chips below flagship tier rumored to be the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5XX Edition and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 Pro. Both are on a 3nm process for more affordable premium phones, and build on the existing Gen 5 chip.
