diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 3b639aed9009..39e89832bf42 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 ### Fixed
 
 - Improve canonicalizations for `tracking-*` utilities ([#19827](https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/pull/19827))
+- Fix crash due to invalid characters in candidate ([#19829](https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/pull/19829))
 
 ## [4.2.2] - 2026-03-18
 
diff --git a/packages/tailwindcss/src/index.test.ts b/packages/tailwindcss/src/index.test.ts
index 5eb7407d81dd..bf1c72c42178 100644
--- a/packages/tailwindcss/src/index.test.ts
+++ b/packages/tailwindcss/src/index.test.ts
@@ -1501,6 +1501,14 @@ describe('Parsing theme values from CSS', () => {
     `)
   })
 
+  // https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/issues/19786
+  test('out-of-range escaped CSS variable candidates do not crash the build', async () => {
+    // Shouldn't crash
+    await run([
+      String.raw`--Coding-Projects-CharacterMapper-Master-Workspace\d8819554-4725-4235-9d22-2d0ed572e924`,
+    ])
+  })
+
   test('`@keyframes` in `@theme` are hoisted', async () => {
     expect(
       await compileCss(
diff --git a/packages/tailwindcss/src/utils/escape.test.ts b/packages/tailwindcss/src/utils/escape.test.ts
index ff7715b9d8dc..f4c8e1192862 100644
--- a/packages/tailwindcss/src/utils/escape.test.ts
+++ b/packages/tailwindcss/src/utils/escape.test.ts
@@ -11,4 +11,14 @@ describe('unescape', () => {
   test('removes backslashes', () => {
     expect(unescape(String.raw`red-1\/2`)).toMatchInlineSnapshot(`"red-1/2"`)
   })
+
+  test('replaces out-of-range escaped code points', () => {
+    expect(
+      unescape(
+        String.raw`--Coding-Projects-CharacterMapper-Master-Workspace\d8819554-4725-4235-9d22-2d0ed572e924`,
+      ),
+    ).toMatchInlineSnapshot(
+      `"--Coding-Projects-CharacterMapper-Master-Workspace�54-4725-4235-9d22-2d0ed572e924"`,
+    )
+  })
 })
diff --git a/packages/tailwindcss/src/utils/escape.ts b/packages/tailwindcss/src/utils/escape.ts
index cbcfa62a0b42..c430e4ad42bf 100644
--- a/packages/tailwindcss/src/utils/escape.ts
+++ b/packages/tailwindcss/src/utils/escape.ts
@@ -74,8 +74,24 @@ export function escape(value: string) {
 
 export function unescape(escaped: string) {
   return escaped.replace(/\\([\dA-Fa-f]{1,6}[\t\n\f\r ]?|[\S\s])/g, (match) => {
-    return match.length > 2
-      ? String.fromCodePoint(Number.parseInt(match.slice(1).trim(), 16))
-      : match[1]
+    if (match.length <= 2) {
+      return match[1]
+    }
+
+    let codePoint = Number.parseInt(match.slice(1).trim(), 16)
+
+    if (
+      // Invalid codepoint: https://infra.spec.whatwg.org/#code-point
+      codePoint === 0x0000 ||
+      codePoint > 0x10ffff ||
+      // Is surrogate: https://infra.spec.whatwg.org/#leading-surrogate
+      //  - A leading surrogate is a code point that is in the range U+D800 to U+DBFF, inclusive.
+      //  - A trailing surrogate is a code point that is in the range U+DC00 to U+DFFF, inclusive.
+      (codePoint >= 0xd800 && codePoint <= 0xdfff)
+    ) {
+      return '\uFFFD'
+    }
+
+    return String.fromCodePoint(codePoint)
   })
 }