Yesterday, Samsung announced that the first One UI 9 beta will start rolling out in several regions later this week, but the English-language press release was murky on the timeline. Today, the company posted just about the same press release in Korean and, buried in the footnotes, are the actual details.
One UI 9 beta will arrive first in Samsung’s usual testing grounds: South Korea, the US, the UK, Germany, Poland and India. However, the new press release clarifies that Poland and India will be part of the second wave of countries and there the beta program will start on May 26 (two weeks from now).
This leaves the other four countries as the first wave. If you have participated in previous betas, you know the drill – you need a supported phone, you need to be in a supported region and you need to sign up for the beta channel via the Samsung Members app.
The list of supported phones is quite short right now: Samsung Galaxy S26, S26+ and S26 Ultra. Older devices will join the program soon, but the Galaxy S25 series, S24 and S23 series are busy with the stable One UI 8.5 right now – and so are the Z foldables.
Speaking of, the new press release also adds this detail – One UI 9 (based on Android 17) will debut with the next generation of Galaxy Z foldables. The company hasn’t officially set a date yet, but the last three Z generations have all been announced in July, so that’s a safe bet. Meanwhile, Google Pixels have been running Android 17 betas for a while now, but the stable release is expected to be announced at Google I/O, which is scheduled for May 19-20 (Tuesday and Wednesday next week).
Check out our post from yesterday for the first details on what new features will be included in One UI 9.