Minecraft 26.4 Snapshots: Every Change So Far (Snapshot 1 to 5)

All five at a glance

How I follow the snapshots

I check minecraft.net every morning. When a snapshot brings something you can see, I load it in its own Prism Launcher instance, open a copy of my world and film the new features in the game, the same way I test mods (How I test). Snapshots 1 and 2 were mostly technical, so I didn’t film them. Everything below comes from Mojang’s changelogs, plus my own observations where I say so.

Snapshot 5: Packed Ice Bricks

Released on October 20, 2026. Packed Ice Bricks are crafted from 2x2 Packed Ice and come with a slab, stairs, a wall and Chiseled Packed Ice, all of which also work in the stonecutter. A new advancement, “What Goes Around Comes Around”, asks you to kill a Frostbite with its own ice ball. Ice blocks surrounded by ice, with air above and water below, can now make ambient sounds, and Windows players get an experimental “Prefer DXGI Present” video setting.

What I saw: I built a small ice castle from the new blocks and made the variants in the stonecutter. When I earned the new advancement, the toast first showed only “Advancement Made!” and the long name appeared about 2 seconds later. I also gave one of the new ice blocks to a Sulfur Cube; according to the changelog, Packed Ice Bricks and Chiseled Packed Ice give it the fast sliding behavior.

For mods: the Fabric API build for Snapshot 5 (0.164.1+26.4, a beta) needs Fabric Loader 0.20.0 or newer. My snapshot instance still had Loader 0.19.5, and Fabric stopped with “requires version 0.20.0 or later of mod Fabric Loader” until I updated it. The login protocol also changed: servers now switch on encryption and compression with explicit packets that the client confirms, which matters for proxies and server software. Several entity tags were renamed, for example #freeze_immune_entity_types is now #immune_to_freezing. Data packs are now 125.0, resource packs 100.2.

Official changelog for Snapshot 5

Snapshot 4: Brittle Ice and jukebox playlists

Released on October 13, 2026. Brittle Ice cracks when players or mobs step on it and breaks after a few steps; it covers the new ice crevasses in ice caves, and only the Frostbite can walk on it safely. A chest on top of a jukebox now works as a playlist: the discs play in slot order and loop. Zombies, Drowned and Husks became immune to freezing, and ice blocks got their own sounds.

My test: every step added one crack stage, and a zombie standing on Brittle Ice dropped through after a few seconds. Water next to Blue Ice turned into Brittle Ice right away. All results, screenshots and a tip for map makers: 26.4 Snapshot 4: Brittle Ice and jukebox playlists.

For mods: the flowing_water and flowing_lava fluid types are gone; fluids now carry a level and a source property. Data packs 124.0, resource packs 100.1.

Official changelog for Snapshot 4

Snapshot 3: ice caves and the Frostbite

Released on October 6, 2026, as the first look at the next game drop. It adds the Ice Caves biome under cold biomes, with icicles and glowing ice crystals, the Frostbite (a zombie variant that throws ice balls), the Freezing effect and potions and arrows of freezing. The friends list was redesigned, and the new Other Players screen replaces Social Interactions.

My test: I filmed everything in a naturally generated ice cave. A two-block icicle dropped from about five blocks killed a zombie with one hit, and a zombie in powder snow turned into a Frostbite after about 17 to 20 seconds. Everything else: 26.4 Snapshot 3: ice caves, the Frostbite and Freezing.

For mods: my own recording mod for 26.3 crashed in this snapshot, because texture classes it used no longer exist in 26.4. Fabric Loader 0.19.5 supported it, and a Fabric API beta came out the same day. Data packs 123.0, resource packs 100.0.

Official changelog for Snapshot 3

Snapshot 2: a new F3 screen

Released on September 29, 2026. The debug overlay (F3) was redesigned to be easier to read. With “Improved Transparency” on, the sky and clouds behind the terrain now blend into the render distance fog, so you no longer see a hard edge where the world ends. In the Overworld, the lower half of the sky now hides the sun, moon and stars below the horizon.

For mods and packs: resource packs with custom core shaders need a look: new shaders draw the sky occluder and the clouds, clouds.fsh lost its transparency support and screenquad.vsh is now screentriangle.vsh. Data packs 122.1, resource packs 99.0.

Official changelog for Snapshot 2

Snapshot 1: Vulkan by default

Released on September 22, 2026. Vulkan is now the default graphics API (“Default” behaves like “Prefer Vulkan”), and the game no longer switches the API by itself after a startup crash. Worlds from before Caves and Cliffs now also get sulfur caves below their old chunks when they are upgraded. Red and brown mushrooms can be placed on any block with a solid top, regardless of light. A long list of fixes includes players and mobs jumping by themselves at the edge of water.

For mods: a new minecraft:mod_list packet lets clients tell servers which mods they run, to make debugging easier. The vanilla client sends it empty; filling it is up to mod loaders. Data packs 122.0, resource packs 98.0.

Official changelog for Snapshot 1

How to try a snapshot safely

1. Open the Minecraft Launcher, go to the Installations tab and turn on snapshots. Then pick the snapshot you want, for example 26.4 Snapshot 5.
2. Protect your worlds. Mojang warns that test versions can corrupt worlds. Back up your worlds or give the snapshot its own game folder in the installation settings.
3. Open copies only. I keep a separate snapshot copy of my world for filming. When I opened a copy of my 26.3 world in a snapshot, the game first asked me to make a backup before upgrading it.
4. Leave your mods out unless they have a build for that exact snapshot. With Fabric, check the Loader version too (0.20.0 or newer for Fabric API on Snapshot 5).

What 26.4 means for mods so far

• 26.3 mods don’t carry over. Each snapshot needs its own builds, and internal classes change: my 26.3 recording mod lost two texture classes in Snapshot 3.
• Fabric keeps up fast. Fabric API had a beta for Snapshot 3 on its release day (0.162.2+26.4), and the build I used for Snapshot 5 (0.164.1+26.4) needs Fabric Loader 0.20.0 or newer.
• Data pack makers have to watch the fluid change in Snapshot 4, the renamed entity tags in Snapshot 5 and a new pack format with every snapshot (122.0 to 125.0).
• Resource pack makers get new textures for the icicle, ice crystal, Brittle Ice, Packed Ice Bricks and the Frostbite, plus new jukebox textures (resource pack format 98.0 to 100.2).

For playing with mods today, stay on 26.3: my 26.3 tier list ranks 27 mods I tested, and the Fabric guide shows how to install them. Everything in the current release is in Minecraft 26.3 Wilderness Bound.