A follow up to my previous message:
I restored my phone from my pre-iOS 26 backup. Apart from a couple of minor hiccups that went smoothly and all my calendar data has returned (yay!).
Never restored a phone from a backup before so it surprised me that:
- The restored phone had iOS 26, not the iOS it had when I backed up.
- I had to re-download quite a few apps, even Apple ones, but not lost any of their data.
A final comment. Like some others have commented, I also had a storage space problem when I first downloaded iOS 26. After I downloaded the iOS, WhatsApp told me there was insufficient space on the phone, so I removed a big pile of photos (I archive them on an external drive).