I found the cause of the issue. Hopefully Apple can get this resolved in an upcoming beta release.
I filed a bug report: FB18649885
Create a new iOS app project using Swift/Storyboard or Objective-C/Storyboard (I imagine a SwiftUI app would have the same issue). Edit the resulting ViewController.swift or ViewController.m. Import CoreLocation. Then in viewDidLoad, add one line:
let coord = CLLocationCoordinate2DMake(40, 40)
or
CLLocationCoordinate2D coord = CLLocationCoordinate2DMake(40, 40);
depending on your chosen language. These are just one of many possible lines of CoreLocation code that will cause the crash.
Set the app's iOS deployment target to iOS 16, 17, or 18. Add a Mac Catalyst destination. Build and run the Mac Catalyst destination with Xcode 26 on a Mac with macOS 15 (or earlier I would think). The issue disappears if you have an iOS deployment target of iOS 15.
The app will crash on startup due to the missing _LocationEssentials.framework.