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 Minecraft:biome featuring Minecraft:icicles and Minecraft:ice crystals, as well as the Minecraft:frostbite, Minecraft:ice balls, and the Minecraft:Freezing effect.

Additions

General

Minecraft:Shaders

• Added sky_occluder.vsh and sky_occluder.fsh shaders which are used to occlude the sky box up until the certain angle with fog color with a smooth occlusion border.

Tags

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

Minecraft:Environment attributes

• Template:Cd
  • Determines whether the sky occluder is enabled for the environment. The sky occluder will occlude the sky box up until a certain angle with fog color with a smooth occlusion border.
    • Value type: boolean
    • Default value: Template:Cd for the Overworld, Template:Cd for the Nether and the End.
    • Interpolated: no

Minecraft:Predicates

• Added Template:Cd
  • Checks if the height of the position is below a given heightmap value.
  • Format:
    • Template:Cd: Heightmap type to compare origin against.

Planned additions

Blocks

File:Ice Crystals.png Minecraft:Ice crystal

• A light source that generates in ice caves.
• Does not melt regular ice or icicle, due to its low light level.

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:Frostbite

• 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 frostbites spawn holding ice balls, and sometimes snowballs which they throw as a ranged attack.
• Frostbites 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:Fog

• Render distance edge fog now makes objects at the edge of loaded chunks, rather than fading them into an opaque, constant colour (which previously made them stick out strongly from the sky).

• Fog typical of 26.3 and prior
  Fog typical of 26.3 and prior
• 26.4+ opacity-modifying fading
  26.4+ opacity-modifying fading

Minecraft:Shaders

• screenquad.vsh was renamed to screentriangle.vsh since it was actually representing a single triangle for a while now.
• Removed OIT (Order-Independent Transparency, controlled by "Improved Transparency" video setting) support from the clouds.fsh, since it is now used to render clouds when OIT is off and to render clouds to an offscreen target when OIT is on.
• Added blit_clouds.fsh shader with OIT support that renders clouds from an offscreen target to OIT targets.

Minecraft:Sky

• When "Improved Transparency" is on, sky background and clouds that are behind the terrain are now blended into the terrain render distance fog making the boundary between the sky and the terrain invisible.
• In the Overworld, the bottom half of the skybox is now occluding the celestial objects such as the sun, the moon and the stars.

Minecraft:UI

• The debug overlay (Template:Keys by default) has been redesigned to be easier to read and understand.Template:More info

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.