IntelliJ 2026.1 fails to start on Windows

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Erdem Cantürk
Created

Hi,

I’m experiencing a startup issue with IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 on Windows.

(Media attachment ID : 2026_03_27_HqMjhdMhbVUGAhAmQpVLMV)

Environment

  • OS: Windows 11
  • IntelliJ IDEA versions:
    • 2025.3.4 → works fine
    • 2026.1 → does not start
  • System JDK: Java 25 (OpenJDK, manually installed)

Problem

IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 does not start at all.
No UI appears, and no meaningful logs are generated under the usual log directory.

However, IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3.4 works perfectly on the same machine.

Investigation

After debugging the issue, I found that the failure happens very early during startup.
From previous attempts, I observed errors related to:

  • ICUBinary.getRequiredData
  • SystemModuleFinders$SystemImage
  • NullPointerException during runtime initialization

This suggests that the bundled JetBrains Runtime (JBR) may not be properly initialized or loaded.

Workaround

I was able to start IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 by forcing it to use an external JDK (Temurin 21):

$env:IDEA_JDK="C:\Program Files\Eclipse Adoptium\jdk-21.0.8.9-hotspot"
& "C:\Program Files\JetBrains\IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1\bin\idea64.exe"

To make it permanent, I created the following file:

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2026.1\idea64.exe.jdk

with content:

C:\Program Files\Eclipse Adoptium\jdk-21.0.8.9-hotspot

After that, IntelliJ starts normally.

Observation

  • The IDE works fine with external JDK 21
  • But it fails when using the bundled runtime (JBR)
  • The IDE also shows a warning suggesting switching back to bundled runtime

Question

  • Why does IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 fail to start with the bundled JBR while 2025.3.4 works?
  • Could this be related to a corrupted JBR distribution or compatibility issue on Windows?
  • Is there a way to repair or force re-download of the bundled runtime?

Thanks in advance.

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5 comments
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Erdem Cantürk
Created

Notification pop-up when I forced JDK for to be able to use intellij 2026.1
 

0
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Serge Baranov
Created

Please see https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-10183 .

0
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L Messori
Created

Hi all, i had specify the language and region in vmoptions, but doesn't solve the issue.
Below the message

 

0
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Serge Baranov
Created

What's in your .vmoptions?

You should remove lines like -Djava.security.manager=allow carried over from the older versions.

See https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/articles/206544869.

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Mehmet Salih
Created

Hi everyone. First of all, I want to mention that I am a 1st-year computer engineering student, so I don't have a lot of deep technical knowledge about these background processes yet. 
I was experiencing the exact same issue and tried your method. It helped me get in, but for some reason, every time I wanted to open the IDE, I found myself having to repeat the same things over and over again. Because of this, I asked Gemini for some help, and together we found a permanent fix by replacing the corrupted files. Here is how I solved my problem: 

  1. Step 1: Download a fresh JetBrains Runtime (JBR) 

    Go to the JetBrains Runtime GitHub releases page:

    https://github.com/JetBrains/JetBrainsRuntime/releases

    Find and download the latest JBR 21 zip file for Windows x64 with JCEF. (The file is named exactly: jbr_jcef-21.0.10-windows-x64-b1163.110.zip). 

  2. Step 2: Replace the broken files in the IntelliJ folder

    Go to where IntelliJ IDEA is installed on your computer (usually  C:\Program Files\JetBrains\IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1). 

    You will see a folder named jbr. This contains the broken files. Rename it to jbr_broken so you have a backup just in case.

    Create a brand new, empty folder named jbr in that same place. 

    Open the .zip file you downloaded and copy everything inside it (the bin, lib, conf folders, etc.) directly into your new jbr folder. Make sure not to nest the folders. 

     

  3. Step 3: Delete the temporary workaround 

    Press Windows+R on your keyboard, type %appdata%\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2026.1 and press Enter 

    Find and delete the idea64.exe.jdk file you created earlier. If you don't delete this, the IDE will ignore your new fix. 

After doing this, the IDE opens perfectly on its own every time with its own bundled runtime. I hope this helps anyone else struggling with the same issue

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