Illustrator crashes on launch on macOS 26.2 (PDFSuite, Apple Silicon)

Product: Adobe Illustrator

Versions tested:
Illustrator 29.8.3 (ARM64)
Illustrator 30.0.0 and 30.1.0 (ARM64)

Platform:
macOS 26.2 (25C56)
Apple Silicon (ARM64)

Issue description:
Illustrator crashes immediately on launch, before the UI is fully loaded.
The crash consistently occurs in PDFSuite on the main thread and is reproducible across multiple Illustrator versions.

This issue persists after reinstalling Illustrator, reinstalling macOS (clean install), clearing preferences and caches, removing third-party plugins, and rolling back to older Illustrator versions.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Install macOS 26.2

2. Install Illustrator (29.8.3 or any 30.x version, ARM64)

3. Launch Illustrator

Expected result:
Illustrator launches normally and shows the main UI.

Actual result:
Illustrator crashes immediately on launch.

Crash details:
Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Subtype: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS
Signal: 11
Crashed Thread: Thread 0 (main thread)

The top of the stack trace shows PDFSuite functions before returning to Adobe Illustrator, indicating the crash happens during startup initialization inside PDFSuite, not during file open or user interaction.

Additional notes:
No document is opened at the time of the crash.
The crash occurs before the UI initialization is complete.
The issue is reproducible on a clean system.
It appears specific to macOS 26.2 on Apple Silicon.
Likely related to PDFSuite initialization or invalid memory access.

Workarounds tried:
Reset preferences – no effect
Remove plugins – no effect
Reinstall OS – no effect
Downgrade Illustrator – no effect

No workaround found.

Impact:
Illustrator is completely unusable on affected systems.

Attachments:
Full macOS crash logs (RTF)

Keywords:
launch crash, PDFSuite, EXC_BAD_ACCESS, SIGSEGV 11, macOS 26.2, Apple Silicon