If You Can’t Activate IMessage After Updating to IOS 26, Try This
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When you updated your iPhone to iOS 26 , you were probably looking forward to trying out a ton of new features . Perhaps you were excited about the new Liquid Glass design or curious about how the new antispam technology worked . But if you opened Messages to send SMS messages after the update, you might have encountered a frustrating problem: suddenly, you can’t activate iMessage with your phone number.
It’s unclear how widespread the issue is, but it appears to be serious enough for Apple to take official action to address it. As MacRumors reports , Apple is now offering official troubleshooting instructions for anyone experiencing iMessage activation issues, especially after updating to iOS 26.
While we don’t know how many users are affected by this issue, we do know who might be affected.According to Apple , the issue may occur when updating to iOS 26 if you have an inactive SIM card with the same phone number as your active SIM card. If you experience this issue, you may encounter the following problems:
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When you try to send an iMessage, you receive a “Not Delivered” notification.
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You can only send SMS messages or RCS messages, or in other words, only text messages with green bubbles .
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If you don’t have this set up, messages you send will be sent to your email address instead of your phone number.
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The same phone number appears twice in Settings > Apps > Messages > Send & Receive .
Reactivating iMessage after installing iOS 26
If this is the case, fixing it is quite simple: simply remove or delete the inactive SIM card. Here’s how: First, go to Settings > Cellular . If you see two SIM cards with the same number, select the inactive one. If the inactive SIM card is a physical one, remove it from your iPhone. If it’s an eSIM, select “Remove eSIM.”
Once you’ve removed the inactive SIM card, go to Settings > Apps > Messages and select Send & Receive. Here, select your phone number, which should activate iMessage.
If you’re still experiencing problems with iMessage after following these steps, the issue may not be related to this error. Apple has a number ofgeneral troubleshooting steps for restoring iMessage functionality, including turning iMessage and FaceTime off and on again, activating your online account, and using your email address to sign in.