qiime2 2026.1 installation error on M-series mac

Technical Support
1

Hi! While not @tcolston , I am also getting this same error while trying to install qiime for the Apple Silicon chips with the Rosetta 2 emulation mode. When I run conda info immediately after trying, I get this

  active environment : qiime2-amplicon-2026.1
    active env location : /Users/kmmika/anaconda3/envs/qiime2-amplicon-2026.1
            shell level : 2
       user config file : /Users/kmmika/.condarc
 populated config files : /Users/kmmika/anaconda3/.condarc
                          /Users/kmmika/anaconda3/condarc.d/anaconda-auth.yml
                          /Users/kmmika/anaconda3/envs/qiime2-amplicon-2026.1/.condarc
          conda version : 26.1.1
    conda-build version : 25.11.1
         python version : 3.13.9.final.0
                 solver : libmamba (default)
       virtual packages : __archspec=1=x86_64
                          __conda=26.1.1=0
                          __osx=14.4=0
                          __unix=0=0
       base environment : /Users/kmmika/anaconda3  (writable)
      conda av data dir : /Users/kmmika/anaconda3/etc/conda
  conda av metadata url : None
           channel URLs : https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/osx-64
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/osx-64
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch
          package cache : /Users/kmmika/anaconda3/pkgs
                          /Users/kmmika/.conda/pkgs
       envs directories : /Users/kmmika/anaconda3/envs
                          /Users/kmmika/.conda/envs
    temporary directory : /var/folders/nw/g1xwv9151db36qszdjjzxgdw0000gn/T
               platform : osx-64
             user-agent : conda/26.1.1 requests/2.32.5 CPython/3.13.9 Darwin/23.4.0 OSX/14.4 solver/libmamba conda-libmamba-solver/25.11.0 libmambapy/2.3.2 aau/0.7.5 c/. s/. e/.
                UID:GID : 501:20
             netrc file : None
           offline mode : False

Any guidance would be helpful! Thanks!

Installation error Apple M4Max Sequoia 15.6
3

Hey @kmmika,

Welcome to the :qiime2: forum :waving_hand:

I've moved your reply to a new topic to help keep additional responses organized.

Thanks for sharing the output of conda info, this is helpful. We have seen a handful of users experience environment install issues for 2026.1 who are on conda version 26.1.1. I'm investigating this, and hope to have it resolved by the 2026.4 release - but in the meantime, the current workaround is to downgrade to a slightly older version of conda.

Please run the following:

conda install -c conda-forge -c bioconda conda=25.11.1

Once you've successfully downgraded to this version of conda, please try creating this environment once more - this should fix the issue, but please let me know if you still run into any problems.

Cheers :lizard:

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