Apple unveiled iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 in June during its Worldwide Developers Conference, as usual, and today during the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air launch the company finally revealed when this version will be released to the public.
It’s happening on September 15, which is the coming Monday. This too is par for the course for Apple, as the date is in between the start of pre-orders for the new devices (September 12) and their release (September 19). Needless to say, the new iPhones will all run iOS 26 from day one.
iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 have been part of Apple’s public beta testing program for the last few weeks, and these have included faster animations for the first time in what seems like iOS history – these make everything feel faster.
Of course, the new Liquid Glass design language is the main feature – it’s been quite a while since Apple last treated us to a redesign of this magnitude for its mobile operating systems. This permeates throughout the OS as well as Apple’s first-party apps.
New in iOS 26 is the Games app, which, as the name implies, is an all-in-one destination for gaming, and Visual Intelligence has received some much needed improvements, including a feature very similar to Google’s Circle to Search. It also has ChatGPT integration now.