My pre-m1 iPadPro has been very slow loading pages in Safari since iPadOS 26. Seems a lot of people are having similar issues. Fixes mentioned range from clearing caches to a complete factory reset.

The solution for me was to go into Settings -> WiFi -> DNS and change the DNS from automatic to manual and configure with a decent DNS.

Unclear what changed to cause the problem (other than the great plague of ‘26) but things feel snappy again. YMMV

Related: what DNS are people using these days?