Minecraft:Java Edition 26.4

Template:Infobox version 26.4, the release of the fourth game drop of 2026, is an upcoming Minecraft:game drop for Template:JE, planned to be released in the fourth quarter of 2026. It introduces the Minecraft:ice caves, a cave biome featuring Minecraft:icicles and Minecraft:ice crystals. It also adds the Minecraft:frozen zombie, Minecraft:ice balls, and the Minecraft:Freezing effect.

Additions

General

Tags

• Added the Template:Cd biome tag.
  • Contains biomes to generate below worlds that predate Minecraft:Caves & Cliffs.
• Added the Template:Cd collection tag.

Planned additions

Blocks

File:Ice Crystals (U).png Minecraft:Ice crystal

• A light source that generates in ice caves.
• Does not melt regular ice or icicle.

File:Icicle.png Minecraft:Icicle

• A spike block that generates as clusters in ice caves.
• Falls when a light source is nearby.

Items

Template:InvSprite Minecraft:Ice ball

• A projectile that can be thrown to produce the Freezing effect.

Minecraft:Potion of Freezing

• Obtained by brewing with an Minecraft:ice ball.

Effects

Minecraft:Freezing

• An effect that makes the player freeze.
  • A piece of leather armor will prevent the Freezing effect.

Entities

width=55x55 Minecraft:Frozen Zombie

• A zombie variant that can be found in mainly snowy biomes, like the ice spikes and ice caves.
• It has two modes of attacking: a melee attack and a ranged attack, similar to Minecraft:drowned.
  • Most frozen zombies use a standard melee attack, which gives Freezing.
  • Some frozen zombies spawn holding ice balls, and sometimes snowballs which they throw as a ranged attack.
• Frozen zombies holding ice balls have a chance to drop them upon being killed.

World generation

Biomes

File:Ice cave.png Minecraft:Ice Caves

• A cave biome that generates underneath frozen biomes.
• Various monsters, strays and frozen zombies can spawn here.

Changes

Blocks

Minecraft:Brown mushroom and Minecraft:red mushroom

• Can now be placed on any block with a top solid face regardless of lighting conditions.
  • They still cannot spread unless the brightness at the new growth is less than 13, or its support block overrides light requirements, like Minecraft:mycelium.

World generation

General

• Upgrading worlds from before Minecraft:Caves and Cliffs will now also generate Minecraft:sulfur caves below old chunks.

Features

• Changed Template:Cd
  • Added the Template:Cd field.
    • Optional int provider, the width of the trunk centered around the origin.
      • Defaults to Template:Cd

Material conditions

• Updated Template:Cd
  • No longer considers height modifications from eroded badlands "surface extensions" in an order-dependent way.

Minecraft:Noise settings

• The Template:Cd field has been removed.
  • This is now always Template:Cd – any other block should be defined by the Minecraft:material rule.Template:More info

Minecraft:Placed features

• The possible domain in the XZ plane of placed features included in biomes is now validated.
  • Feature placement can only occur within a 3×3 chunk region: as such, it is not valid for a Placed Feature to select a position outside of that range.
  • Note: the size of the feature itself is not currently taken into consideration, which may still overflow the chunk.

Placement modifiers

• Changed Template:Cd
  • Template:Cd and Template:Cd have been adjusted to represent the actual size of the cuboid, instead of implicitly being 1 block larger.
    • As such, an Template:Cd of Template:Cd will actually produce a 2×2 cuboid instead of 3×3.
• Changed Template:Cd
  • Template:Cd now requires at least one element.

Command format

General

• NBT conversion from floating point types to integer types now always converts to the closest possible valid number after rounding down.

Template:Cmd

• Will now fill biomes with block accuracy.

General

Minecraft:Data pack

• The Minecraft:pack format version is now Template:Cd.
• Entries for different biomes in multi-noise biome sources can no longer overlap across all noise parameters with the same offset.

Dedicated server properties

• Added Template:Cd
  • A list of comma-separated ids.
  • If non-empty, the server will match the values against Template:Cd property in Template:Cd packet.
    • If there is no match, the server will reject the connection.
  • This works both for both status and login connections, so any user connecting without the correct Template:Cd in the server address will not see the status and will not be able to join the server.
• Added Template:Cd field
  • If non-empty, the value of this field will be sent in the Template:Cd packet JSON payload under the contact property.
  • This value is meant to be used to signal a way to contact the server owners about the server, even if there is no website or other information about it.
  • This field is meant to be human-readable, but there are no other restrictions on field format.
• Added Template:Cd field
  • This option allows disabling existing legacy (pre-1.7) server status and ping protocol handling.
  • To preserve existing functionality, value defaults to Template:Cd.
  • Note: Template:Cd needs to be set for any status information (modern or legacy) to be set.

Network protocol

• Added Template:Cd custom packet payload
  • This packet is intended to inform servers about client mods to simplify debugging.
  • Vanilla client sends an empty packet at the start of configuration phase, as it does not know about any mods – that is still a responsibility of 3rd-party modding platforms.

• Modified Template:Cd packet
  • The Template:Cd field in the serverbound intention packet can now hold additional parameters (previously it stored only the domain name used for connecting to a server).
    • The new format is similar to URI query strings – the domain can now optionally be followed by a Template:Cd character and then followed by Template:Cd pairs separated by a Template:Cd character.
    • Empty values can be omitted (including Template:Cd sign).
    • Keys and values are escaped according to the standard URI rules ("percent-encoded component").
    • Keys starting with Template:Cd are reserved for vanilla use.
    • Users can now input properties in any "Server Address" field in the server list.
      • Additionally, any address in form of Template:Cd will be parsed as Template:Cd
    • If a server uses SRV DNS records, the host field will contain both original and resolved domains.
      • If the resolved domain is different from the original domain, the resolved one will be used as the "primary" one, while the original one will be added as Template:Cd ("origin") property.
      • Example host string: Template:Cd, while the port field in the intention packet will be set to the resolved port value.
    • The field size has been extended to 1024 characters.
    • Note: since the Template:Cd packet is unencrypted, properties should not be used for any security-sensitive purpose.

• Modified Template:Cd packet
  • Added Template:Cd field – a string to string map of properties that will be added to the host field in the Template:Cd packet sent to the target server.

Minecraft:Options

• "Graphics API" Video Setting:
  • "Default" now behaves the same as "Prefer Vulkan".
  • The game will no longer change the graphics API setting automatically if a startup crash is detected.

Order-Independent Transparency shaders

• The OIT algorithm was simplified by replacing the wavelet-based mathematics with depth bin-based accumulation.
  • Slightly improved performance at least on some devices.
  • Reduced floating point precision issues on average.
  • Template:Cd shader define was removed.
  • Template:Cd shader define was replaced by Template:Cd
  • Template:Cd shader define was renamed to Template:Cd

Minecraft:Resource pack

• The version is now Template:Cd.