Back to Minecraft: Every Drop of 2026 (26.1 to 26.4)

The version numbers

Minecraft now counts by year: 26.1 is the first drop of 2026, and the latest release is 26.3. Mojang announced the change on December 2, 2025. The number is year, drop and hotfix, so 26.1.2 is the second hotfix of the first drop of 2026. That’s why there never was a 1.22: the last version with the old numbering was 1.21.11 (Mounts of Mayhem, December 2025). Snapshots carry the target version in their name too, for example 26.4 Snapshot 5.

26.1 Tiny Takeover (March)

Released on March 24, 2026. Almost every baby mob got a new model and new baby sounds: Mojang lists 38 baby mobs with new models and textures, from cows and wolves to villagers and piglins. Want a baby to stay small forever? Feed it a golden dandelion, crafted from a dandelion and gold nuggets; use another one and it grows up again. It doesn’t work on undead babies or baby villagers. Name tags are craftable now too: one paper and one metal nugget. In return, librarians no longer sell them and Ancient Cities and Woodland Mansions no longer have them as loot; wandering traders sell them for one emerald. Cats, pigs, cows and chickens got new sound variants, a note block on copper plays a trumpet, and the stonecutter turns stone and deepslate straight into their cobbled, polished, brick and tile variants.

What I saw: I lined up the new babies on a meadow for the video. After I fed a baby cow a golden dandelion, green particles appeared on it (see the gallery).

Under the hood: since 26.1, Minecraft needs Java 25 (the launcher ships it), the default memory went from 2 GB to 4 GB, and the game files are no longer obfuscated, which matters for mod developers. Old worlds show “Upgrade and Play” before they open.

26.2 Chaos Cubed (June)

Released on June 16, 2026. The new mob is the Sulfur Cube, which lives in the new Sulfur Caves deep underground: bands of sulfur and cinnabar, pools of Potent Sulfur and cave spiders. Hand the cube a block and it swallows it. Then it’s a physics toy you can punch and push: wood makes it bouncy, ice makes it slide, TNT makes it explosive and a magma block makes it hot. Shears take the block back out, and a big cube splits into two small ones when it dies. Small cubes grow when you feed them slime balls, and large ones fit in a bucket.

Potent Sulfur forms a geyser over magma, and over lava a continuous one that launches you into the air, and Sulfur Spikes grow, merge and fall like dripstone. Chaos Cubed also added sulfur and cinnabar building sets, a friends list (O key), a new music disc and an experimental Vulkan renderer. Two surprises for returning players: hoglins are now hostile and no longer spawn on Peaceful, and Touchscreen Mode was removed.

What I saw: the Sulfur Cave in my screenshots generated naturally; I found it with /locate. When I handed a Sulfur Cube oak planks, it swallowed them.

26.3 Wilderness Bound (September)

The Dappled Forest is full of poplar trees in red, orange and yellow, with shelf mushrooms on the trunks that are a little bouncy. Abandoned camps generate in eighteen biomes, each with its own design and loot. And you can finally sit down: cushions come in sixteen colors, crafted from three wool slabs. Add straw beds, wool stairs and slabs and concrete stairs and slabs.

What I saw: the Dappled Forest at the top of this page and the abandoned camp in the gallery both generated naturally in my world. Sitting on a cushion, the game shows “Press Left Shift to get up”. Every change of the drop, with more screenshots: Minecraft 26.3 Wilderness Bound.

26.4 is already in snapshots

Ice caves with icicles and glowing ice crystals, the Frostbite (a frozen zombie that can throw ice balls), Brittle Ice that cracks under your feet over deep crevasses, and jukebox playlists from a chest on top. Snapshot 5 added Packed Ice Bricks. The snapshot changelogs don’t name the drop or a release date yet. My tests: Snapshot 3 and Snapshot 4, and every snapshot in one place: Every Minecraft 26.4 snapshot so far.

Coming back to an old world?

New biomes only generate in chunks you haven’t explored yet, so head out further than before. Make a backup before you press “Upgrade and Play”. And in 26.4 Snapshot 1, Mojang went one step further for very old worlds: worlds from before Caves and Cliffs get Sulfur Caves below their old chunks when they are upgraded.

Your mods

The big ones already run on 26.3: Sodium, Iris and Distant Horizons. Mods only work on the version they were made for, so download the 26.3 file of each mod from its official page. Every mod I tested this month ran on Fabric for 26.3; the best of them are in my 26.3 tier list, and my Fabric guide shows the setup step by step, including Java 25.

Where to start

• Explore: find a Dappled Forest and an abandoned camp; both are new since 26.3.
• Survival upgrade: craft name tags from paper and a nugget, and keep your favorite baby animal small with a golden dandelion.
• Underground: look for Sulfur Caves and hand a Sulfur Cube a block.
• With mods: start with Sodium for more frames, then add what you like from the tier list.