During its WWDC 2025 event in June, Apple took the wrappers off of iOS 26. It brings the all new Liquid Glass design with translucent elements on the home/lock screen, icons, apps and across the entire system along with a few additions like live translation and call screening. These features are already part of the developer and public betas, but if you haven't tried them out yet or aren't sure whether the update is available for your iPhone, here's a list of supported iPhones that will run iOS 26.
iOS 26 Supported iPhones
iOS 26 can run on the Apple A13 Bionic or newer chipsets, meaning the iPhone 11 and all subsequent models will be eligible to download the latest mobile OS. Unfortunately, if you own an iPhone XR or XS, you're out of luck as iOS 18 is the last major update available for your device. That said, here's a list of all the iPhones that will support iOS 26:
- iPhone 16
- iPhone 16e
- iPhone 16 Plus
- iPhone 16 Pro
- iPhone 16 Pro Max
- iPhone 15
- iPhone 15 Plus
- iPhone 15 Pro
- iPhone 15 Pro Max
- iPhone 14
- iPhone 14 Plus
- iPhone 14 Pro
- iPhone 14 Pro Max
- iPhone 13
- iPhone 13 Mini
- iPhone 13 Pro
- iPhone 13 Pro Max
- iPhone 12
- iPhone 12 Mini
- iPhone 12 Pro
- iPhone 12 Pro Max
- iPhone 11
- iPhone 11 Pro
- iPhone 11 Pro Max
- iPhone SE (3rd generation)
- iPhone SE (2nd generation)
Judging by the fate of the iPhone XR and iPhone XS models, it's highly likely that iOS 26 is the last major update you might see on the iPhone 11 series. The device is receiving its sixth major update, having released in 2019 with iOS 13. Both the iPhone 12 series and iPhone SE (2nd generation) may still get the iOS 27 update when it releases next year.
iOS 26 confirmed features
If you haven't been tracking the latest updates, iOS 26 has a bunch of new features in terms of design and functionality and here are some of the most significant features:
- Liquid Glass brings with it a translucent UI that reflects and refracts like glass to offer a cohesive look on the home screen, lock screen, Control Centre, apps, and across the whole system.
- Lock screen clock can be resized to any size, so you can stretch it to take up most of the screen if you want to.
- Spatial scene animation adds a 3D wallpaper effect to the lock screen, giving it a sense of realism and movement.
- Simpler Photo and Video tabs inside the Camera app now make it easy for every one to click pictures, as more complex options are now tucked away.
- Redesigned Photos app shows all camera shots in the Library tab and every other image inside Collections.
- Phone app now offers a single-screen layout that displays the Favourites and Recents for ease of use.
- Hold Assist on the Phone app lets your iPhone stay on hold for you during a call, so that you can avoid listening to long hold music.
- The Phone app also brings Call Screening which can filter unwanted calls by asking the caller for their name purpose for calling.
- Messages app now offers customisable chat backgrounds, polls and the ability to screen unwanted people like the Phone app.
- Apple Music hosts three new features – AutoMix, Lyrics Translation and Lyrics Pronunciation, all pretty self-explanatory.
- Live Translation uses Apple Intelligence to convert languages in real-time when communication via Phone, FaceTime and Messages apps.
- Image Playground can now generate images using ChatGPT and thus offer more styles and effects.
- Visual Intelligence is screen aware, so it can extract the contents off of your screen and respond to relevant queries.
- Other changes include Apple Intelligence in Shortcuts app to create automations and Liquid Glass integration for Apple CarPlay among other additions.
iOS 26 potential release date
While nothing is official at the moment, recent rumours have pointed out that could schedule a September 9, 2025 event to host the launch of its iPhone 17 lineup. As always, all the upcoming models can be expected to run iOS 26 out-of-the-box, which would mean the next versions of Apple's OSes could all drop on the same day – September 9, 2025.
Now, keep in mind that this is still a rumour at this point. So, you should just take this with a grain of salt until Apple confirms the date officially. The company usually gives a two-week notice for its upcoming event, so judging by that, we can expect an official date announcement around the last week of August 2025.
If you can't wait until September, then you can install the iOS 26 beta on your iPhone, which is available in both developer and public beta builds. The update is in the final stages of testing, so these builds are pretty close to the stable version at the time.
