Yes. Several times.
Each watch would spend many hours at “verifying…” status during the update.
What eventually worked:
1 - unpair Watch from my iPhone 17 Pro Max that I had INSTALLED AS NEW specifically to minimize odds of any old, unneeded app or setting causing errors.
2 - from the watch: Settings , General, Erase and reset watch, keeping celllular plan
3 - force reset phone
4 - install 26.0.2 to the watch
5 - wait 6 hours or overnight for "Verifying..." to finish
Several times (at least 2 or 3 on each!) of attempting 1-5 on each watch eventually worked. This 26.0.2 Watch update took from Monday through Thursday of constant babysitting to complete for 2 watches.
6 - Then the watches still could not make phone calls. At this point I finally decided to simply return them.
My last ditch thought - call AT&T. Lucked into a very thoughtful agent! The agent said that he disconnected and reconnected each phone number to my watch.
Now I can make phone calls with each watch.