Minecraft:Java Edition 26.4

Template:Update Template:Infobox version Template:Relevant guide 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, and fixes bugs.

Additions

Blocks

File:Ice Crystal (U) JE1.png Minecraft:Ice crystal

• A crystal block which generates on the ground in Minecraft:ice caves.
• Provides a small amount of Minecraft:light.
• Can be placed on all sides of a block.

File:Icicle.png Minecraft:Icicle

• A spike block that generates as stalactites on the ceiling in Minecraft:ice caves.
• Can also be placed on the ground as stalagmites.
• Minecraft:Icicle blocks melt and break when a strong enough light source is nearby, or in Minecraft:the Nether.
• Falling Minecraft:icicles deal damage to entities.
• Falling on an Minecraft:icicle stalagmite multiplies the fall damage.

Items

Template:InvSprite Minecraft:Frostbite spawn egg

• Used to spawn a Minecraft:frostbite.

Template:InvSprite Minecraft:Ice ball

• A throwable projectile that deals damage.
  • It does more damage based on its projectile speed and breaks on impact.
• Can be used to brew potions of Freezing.
• Obtained by frostbites, which have a chance to drop them when killed.

Template:AnimateSpriteMinecraft:Potion of Freezing

• Obtained by brewing an Minecraft:awkward potion with an Minecraft:ice ball.
• Causes the Minecraft:Freezing effect when consumed.

Template:InvSprite Minecraft:Arrow of Freezing

• A Minecraft:tipped arrow which causes the Freezing effect.

Mobs

width=55x55 File:Baby Frostbite.png Minecraft:Frostbite

• A Minecraft:zombie variant that can be found in snowy biomes.
  • Zombies convert into frostbites when they stay in Minecraft:powder snow too long.
  • Husks now also convert into zombies when they stay in Minecraft:powder snow too long.
• Immune to Minecraft:Freezing.
  • Does not sink in Minecraft:powder snow.
• Burns in sunlight.
• It has two modes of attacking: a melee attack and a ranged attack.
  • Most frostbites use a standard melee attack, which gives the Freezing effect.
  • Some frostbites spawn holding ice balls, which they throw as a ranged attack.
• Drops ice balls and Minecraft:rotten flesh when killed.
• Converts into a zombie when underwater for too long.

Effects

File:Freezing BE1.png Minecraft:Freezing

• An effect that causes an entity to Minecraft:freeze, dealing damage over time and slowing their movement.
• Wearing a piece of leather armor prevents freezing damage but not the slowness.
• Standing in Minecraft:fire or Minecraft:lava removes the freezing damage, while being on fire doesn’t.

World generation

Biomes

Template:BiomeSprite Minecraft:Ice caves

• A cave biome that generates underneath frozen biomes.
• Minecraft:Calcite, Minecraft:packed ice, Minecraft:icicles, Minecraft:ice crystals and sometimes patches of Minecraft:snow can generate here.
• Does not generate Minecraft:glow lichen, unlike other cave biomes.
• Ores generate inside blobs of Minecraft:stone and Minecraft:deepslate.
• Common cave monsters along with Minecraft:strays and Minecraft:frostbites can spawn here.

General

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.

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.

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.

Minecraft:Snow

• Can now be placed on packed ice.

Items

Minecraft:Snowball

• Now applies knockback to players.

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.

Minecraft:Fog

• Render distance edge fog now reduces the opacity of objects at the edge of loaded chunks, rather than fading them into an opaque, constant color (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

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.

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 Minecraft:sun, the Minecraft:moon and the stars.

Minecraft:UI

• The items in the debug overlay (Template:Keys by default) are now sorted into categories and have been made easier to read and understand.

• The original default debug screen design
  The original default debug screen design
• The new default debug screen design
  The new default debug screen design