hitex format 2026

The pretest news says that there is no hilatex as format changes are needed
but there doesn't appear to be a plain hitex either? I get

$ hitex
This is HiTeX 2.0, TeX version 3.141592653 (TeX Live 2026) (preloaded
format=hitex)
**\relax

kpathsea: Running mktexfmt hitex
mktexfmt: mktexfmt is using the following fmtutil.cnf files (in precedence
order):
mktexfmt:   /usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
mktexfmt: mktexfmt is using the following fmtutil.cnf file for writing
changes:
mktexfmt:   /home/davidc/.texlive2026/texmf-config/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
mktexfmt [INFO]: writing formats under
/usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-var/web2c
mktexfmt [INFO]: Did not find entry for byfmt=hitex skipped
mktexfmt [INFO]: disabled formats: 3
mktexfmt [INFO]: not selected formats: 52
mktexfmt [INFO]: total formats: 55
mktexfmt [INFO]: executable location:
/usr/local/texlive/2026/bin/x86_64-linux/mktexfmt
mktexfmt [INFO]: exiting with status 0
I can't find a format file!

If I try to make a format I get

hitex --etex --ini hitex.ini

! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [character code in pattern=12287].
l.60 ...0^^ba^^d1^^82^^d0^^b0^^cc^^817^^ea^^99^^8b

so for both plain and latex it seems to be the new utf-8 support confusing
things, but
I'm not sure where yet?

David