Help! Illustrator 2021 Won't Load

Hi.  The only thing that has worked for me is to shutdown and restart Ilutrator, making sure that it is the first Adobe program that gets launched first.  I tried everything that everyone has said to do and this is the only way that works for me to get back to work.  I hope this helps.

Same issue here. I hate adobe so much and I hate that I have to use it. 

Also having the same issue. I have checked the fonts, reset the preferences, etc to all of the suggested fixes. It's not us, it's definitely the program. It needs to be fixed. I can't even get a bug report cause it never get's that far to make one.

UPDATED!! After two days of troubleshooting personally as well as with Adobe agents, I have come to realize what was causing my Illustrator 2021 to suddenly crash and literally be nonfunctional..... it's so simply... a font. Yes... it was the font I was using that illustrator did not agree with.

for everyone with the same issues, perhaps it's a preset you've installed. Hope this helps!!!

Everyone needs to get Adobe's attention by posting here: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447-illustrator-desktop-bugs/filters/new?category_id=209740

POSSIBLE SOLUTION IF YOU HAVE WACOM TABLET SOFTWARE INSTALLED:

I had a user in our company whose Illustrator 2021 running on Mojave 10.14.6 would get hung up at the Initialization step of launching.  No amount of removing fonts or resetting Illustrator preferences would fix it.

One thing that made her Mac unique from others in the company that did not have the issue, was that she had a Wacom Bamboo CTH-470 and the software to drive it that had been installed a few major versions of the OS ago.  Specifically what solved this for her Mac was we **opened the Wacom Utility from the Applications folder, then under the Tablet Software menu, clicked Remove, and then clicked Uninstall**.  Then Illustrator 2021 launched correctly. We had also noticed that the system preference control panel for "PenTablet.pref" was moved into the Incompatible Software folder on her boot hard drive after we upgraded her Mac from High Sierra to Mojave.

So try launching Illustrator after uninstalling any Wacom software.  If Illustrator is launching correctly, now decide if you still need to use your Wacom tablet.  If so, then try installing the newest Wacom software at the link below (Driver 6.3.41-2) and hope the newest version does not brake Illustrator 2021 again.

https://www.wacom.com/en-jp/support/product-support/drivers#latest

I think Adobe needs to realize that it has been isolated to Illustrator v25.0 only. Like everyone else, the latest releases of Photoshop v22.0.1, InDesign v16.0, and Bridge v11.0 all work just fine. Moving down to Illustrator v24.3 seemed to help get everyone back to work. However, since this is a newer version, there is a question on the projects that we have been working on with v25.0 will open up without any hiccups with v24.3. I am testing that right now as I have an iMac running Big Sur with Illustrator v24.3 and have a Macbook Pro running Catalina with Illustrator v25.0. So far I don't have any problems running v25.0 on the Macbook Pro under Catalina. In addition, I am running Extensis Suitcase Fusion v21.2.1 on both machines under both operating systems. I have been in contact with them as they are hoping to release a version that is supported on Big Sur. But when Illustrator v25.0 on Big Sur just bombed on its own, just like everyone else here (about the same time) I was able to somehow get it to load up into Safe Mode (don't ask me how I did it because like everyone else, I have seen Illustrator just sit there on the load screen regardless of it trying to initialize or do one of its many Diagnostic tests). But I was only able to get it to open in Safe Mode a couple of times. When it did, Illustrator identified that it had a problem with the Suitcase Fusion plug-in. I have since disabled the plug-in just for Illustrator through Suitcase Fusion and still, Illustrator will not load, even to a diagnostic state. But Adobe needs to understand that the simultaneous moment that multiple users experienced an abrupt shutdown of Illustrator and it not loading with the acceptable wait time, that there is something much more than "old residual files" present. There shouldn't be any reason that an Adobe employee needs to be inside monkeying around user's machines. Just like when the Create Suite was the latest product line before CC, it needs to provide a Tool Cleaner program to rid of all these "old" files for us now. Or during the large push of CC 2021, the installer should remove all instances of CC 2019 and CC 2020. (I just looked in my Applications Folder and found those folders for those previous releases. I removed them.) Please find a fix ASAP for us that have moved to Big Sur and want to run the latest version of Illustrator beyond v25.0.

Please contact Customer Care. They need to log into your system and check it out. https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html

This happens because of old stuff installed in your system. Customer Care can help isolate it.

Same problem for me too, i'm writing now but it's since Illustrator 2021 that gives me this annoying problem it's absurd that Adobe still hasn't solved it.