useI18nContext throws error on _payload.json requests with SWR/ISR routes and cold cache

[draganpetos]

Environment

• Nuxt: 4.2.2
• Nitro: 2.12.9
• @nuxtjs/i18n: 10.2.1
• Deployment: Netlify (SWR/ISR)
• Node: 22.20.0

Reproduction

1. Create a Nuxt 4 project with @nuxtjs/i18n
2. Configure route rules with ISR/SWR
3. Deploy to Netlify
4. Navigate to any page - the _payload.json request fails with 500 error
5. Refresh the page - it works (cache is now warm)

Describe the bug

When using the @nuxtj/i18n module with latest Nuxt version on Netlify (both locally and in production), _payload.json requests fail during ISR/SWR requests with cold cache:

H3Error: Nuxt I18n server context has not been set up yet.
at useI18nContext (file:///.netlify/functions-serve/.unzipped/server/chunks/nitro/nitro.mjs:7280:11)
at file:///.netlify/functions-serve/.unzipped/server/chunks/nitro/nitro.mjs:7630:17

This is a critical issue for production deployments using ISR/SWR with i18n, as it causes 500 errors on first page loads.

Additional context

• Netlify local: Consistently on _payload.json requests
• Netlify production: Only on first request with cold cache when using ISR/SWR routes
• Nuxt dev: Does NOT occur
• After refresh: Works fine (cache is warm)