Calendar invites send as email after iOS 26.1 update

Apple Calendar invites sending as emails instead of Calendar inbox notifications after iOS 26.1 update

My mom and I frequently use calendar invites (Apple calendar app on iPhone) to share important events with each other. It’s been working fine for years, but after updating to iOS 26.1, invites only send as emails even if we type the person’s phone number into the “to” box. This means we miss half the invites we get because we don’t check our email regularly.

I looked at other Apple community topics on this and checked all the relevant settings, and they look correct on both phones (e.g., iCloud calendar enabled; invites set to “Notifications” instead of “Email”). Neither of us have changed any settings or added/removed any accounts lately. The only change was updating to iOS 26.1.

What else can we try? This is pretty important because we use it for sharing critical appointments.

iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Plus, both running iOS 26.1