Hi Albert,
We were also intrigued by this incident and went ahead and called up the customers affected by it.
All the clients had installed iOS 26.2.x.
With their feedback, we could reproduce the issue:
(EU region, iPhone running 26.2.1)
Install an alternative browser, such as Chrome
Long press on the Safari icon and choose "Remove app"
Make Chrome default
Open an app that does a redirect to an external url -> redirect no longer works
Reinstalling Safari fixes the issue again.
Topic:
UI Frameworks
SubTopic:
UIKit