Check the leftmost panel of your Galaxy phone’s home screen. If it shows Samsung News, that feed has a shutdown date: December 21, 2026, at 00:00 UTC. Samsung has posted a discontinuation notice inside the app in India and South Korea, and multiple outlets reported it on October 29. The app, its widget and the dedicated media page will all stop working.
Samsung has not given a reason, and it has not yet confirmed the shutdown for other markets. But given that the notice has already appeared in two major markets, Galaxy owners elsewhere should plan as if the same date applies to them, and watch for a local notice.
What exactly goes away on December 21
According to Samsung’s in-app notice, quoted by SamMobile and PhoneArena, Samsung News will be discontinued as of December 21, 2026, at 00:00 UTC. After that, the widget will no longer receive content updates, and Samsung recommends removing it from your home screen. The shutdown covers the standalone app, the widget and the media page on the leftmost home screen of Galaxy phones and tablets.
Beyond headlines, Samsung News offered sports scores, stock updates and daily trivia questions, all of which go with it. Following the shutdown, Samsung says all user data, profiles and personalization information will be deleted, except where local law requires retention for a set period, after which that data will also be erased.
The fourth feed in that spot since 2017
Samsung News is only the latest name for a feed Samsung has repeatedly relaunched. Bixby Home arrived in April 2017, Samsung Daily replaced it in October 2019, Samsung Free took over in late 2020 with One UI 3.0, and Samsung News replaced Samsung Free in 2023. At three years and eight months, Samsung News actually outlived each of its predecessors, but the pattern is clear: Samsung keeps trying to own the news feed, and keeps walking away from it.
The shutdown fits a broader clean-up. Samsung recently announced it is ending its Daily+ service on TVs and smart monitors, and it has been winding down Samsung Messages in the US in favor of Google Messages. The direction is consistent: where a Google service already does the job, Samsung is dropping its own duplicate. Our earlier report on Samsung’s Galaxy A production cuts shows the same cost discipline on the hardware side.
Switch to Google Discover now, not in December
The good news is that the replacement is already on your phone. Galaxy owners can choose Google Discover for the leftmost home screen panel today, and Android Authority expects the panel to fall back to Discover once Samsung News goes dark. Switching now beats finding a blank panel in December.
To switch, long-press on an empty area of your home screen, swipe to the leftmost panel settings, and select Google Discover instead of Samsung News. If you do not see the option, check that the Google app is updated, since Discover is served through it.
Save anything you want to keep before the cutoff
Samsung has not announced any migration path for Samsung News data. Bookmarked articles, followed topics and personalization settings inside Samsung News are unlikely to carry over to Google products, so save anything you care about now. Open any article you want to keep and save it in your browser or a read-later app, and note down any publishers you followed so you can re-follow them in Google News or Discover.
After December 21, remove the Samsung News widget from your home screen, as Samsung itself recommends. If the app remains installed but dead, you can also disable or uninstall it to declutter, though on some Galaxy models Samsung apps can only be disabled rather than fully removed.
What this means for Galaxy owners
For most people, this shutdown will be a minor inconvenience: one feed replaced by another, with better personalization in Discover for many users. The real loss is for the minority who genuinely used Samsung News daily, including its trivia questions and sports alerts, since Discover does not replicate those features one for one. Third-party options like Flipboard and SmartNews remain if you want a dedicated news app rather than a feed panel.
The wider lesson is worth noting before you invest in another Samsung feed. Samsung has now retired four news feeds in nine years, so treat any future Samsung content panel as temporary, and keep your bookmarks and follows in a service you control. Google Discover, for all its faults, is at least the feed Samsung itself keeps falling back to.
Sources: SamMobile, October 29, 2026; PhoneArena, October 29, 2026; AndroidHeadlines, October 29, 2026. Samsung has confirmed the shutdown in India and South Korea; other markets await official confirmation.
