Minecraft is getting ice caves before the year ends and a whole new dimension next year. That’s the short version of Minecraft Live on September 26, which arrived four days after the first 26.4 snapshot that made Vulkan the game’s default renderer.
Java Edition 26.4 is the fourth and last game drop of 2026, and it isn’t out yet. What exists today is two snapshots full of technical changes, a first look at the Ice Caves content, and a pile of half-right rumors about which features belong to 26.4 and which belong to 2027.
Here’s what’s confirmed, what’s still missing, and how players are taking it so far.
Where 26.4 Fits In
This year’s drops have kept a steady pace: Tiny Takeover (26.1), Chaos Cubed (26.2), and Wilderness Bound (26.3). Wilderness Bound went live on September 15 as Java 26.3 and Bedrock 26.50. It added the dappled forest with its poplar trees, red shrubs, and shelf mushrooms, plus abandoned camps, straw beds, cushions, and wool and concrete stairs and slabs. It did not add a mob. If you want to know more, you can check out our blog on The New Wilderness Bound update.
Seven days later, 26.4 Snapshot 1 showed up with no name and no theme attached, which left Minecraft Live to fill in the blanks.
Mojang still hasn’t given the drop an official name. The Minecraft Wiki files it under Fourth Drop 2026, with Winter Drop and Holiday Drop as working titles. It ships as Java 26.4 and Bedrock 26.70, and the target is the fourth quarter of 2026. There’s no exact date.
What Mojang Showed at Minecraft Live
The stream ran on Saturday, September 26, at 1 PM ET, and the headline for the next drop is a new cave biome. Neither snapshot so far contains any of it, so everything below comes from the reveal and the wiki’s write-up.
Broken down by feature:
Ice Caves. A new cave biome that generates underneath frozen biomes, in the same family as dripstone, lush, and sulfur caves. The walls mix calcite, ice, packed ice, and blue ice, and ores generate inside blobs of stone and deepslate. Strays and the new frozen zombies spawn here alongside the usual cave monsters. Kotaku described the caves as ore-heavy and an easy source of ice.
Ice crystals and icicles. Ice crystals grow on the ground, give off a small amount of light, and can be placed on any axis. Icicles hang from the ceiling and can also be placed on the ground. They’re a hazard as well as decoration: an icicle column melts and falls when a light source is nearby, and a falling icicle damages whatever it hits. That makes a torch a slightly worse idea than usual.
The frozen zombie. A zombie variant found in ice caves and snowy biomes. Most use a melee attack that applies freezing. Some spawn holding ice balls and throw them from range, a bit like drowned do. Mojang says the name is still a placeholder.
Ice balls. A throwable projectile that deals more damage the faster it flies. You get them by killing frozen zombies that were carrying them, and only some of those drop one.
Freezing. A new status effect that deals damage over time and slows movement. Leather armor blocks the damage but not the slowdown. The effect technically already existed through powder snow, so this is mostly about giving it a proper name and putting it in your hands. You can brew a Potion of Freezing from an awkward potion and an ice ball, with splash and lingering versions, and there’s an Arrow of Freezing too.
Health, damage, freezing duration, and drop rates haven’t been shown. Expect those to show up once the content lands in a snapshot.
What’s Actually in the Snapshots So Far
Snapshot 1 came out on September 22, and Mojang framed it as a run of technical updates. It has no Ice Caves content at all.
The biggest change is graphics. In the Graphics API video setting, “Default” now behaves like “Prefer Vulkan”, so Vulkan is the default renderer. The game also no longer switches the setting automatically if it detects a crash on startup, so anyone who used to get bounced to a different renderer after a crash will now stay on Vulkan. OpenGL is still there if you pick it yourself.
World generation got a small but useful change. Upgrading a world from before Caves and Cliffs now also generates sulfur caves below the old chunks.
Red and brown mushrooms can now be placed on any block with a solid top face, no matter the light level. They still can’t spread unless the brightness is below 13 or the support block overrides the light requirement. The bug report behind it points out that Bedrock already worked this way.
Under the hood, the data pack version moved to 122.0 and the resource pack version to 98.0. The order-independent transparency shaders were simplified, which Mojang says slightly improves performance on some devices.
The bug list is long. Fixes include the water bounce glitches where players and mobs would jump on their own at a water’s edge, item frames dropping in the wrong spot when removed from a ceiling, the world border rendering wrongly from outside, ghost items when duplicating in Creative with the scroll wheel, distorted minecart sounds, and dyed wolf armor losing its crack overlay.
Snapshot 2 is already out too, and it’s a visual one. With Improved Transparency turned on, the sky and clouds behind the terrain now blend into the render distance fog, which hides the boundary between sky and land. In the Overworld, the bottom half of the skybox now blocks the sun, moon, and stars, so they no longer show through the horizon. The F3 screen got a redesign as well. Data packs move to 122.1 and resource packs to 99.0, with fixes for z-fighting around small armor stands’ necks, missing statistics when placing lily pads and frogspawn, and clouds that rendered behind foggy terrain.
The Sift Is Not Part of 26.4
It’s easy to blur the two, so to be clear: the new dimension is not coming with Ice Caves.
The Sift is Minecraft’s fourth dimension, after the Overworld, the Nether, and the End. It’s the first new one in more than 14 years, and it’s coming to Java and Bedrock in 2027 with no more specific date. Mojang says it’s being built alongside the regular drops rather than in place of them.
You can visit it earlier in Minecraft Dungeons II, which launches today, September 29. Mojang calls it beautiful and teeming with souls. The Dungeons II version has red and orange stone, green plant life, ichor, and sculk, and it names two areas so far, the Meadows and the Carapace.
The only mob confirmed for the vanilla version is the blub, a small, passive, rabbit-like creature that squeaks. Mojang hasn’t said how you’ll reach the Sift in the main game, what mobs and blocks it will have, or how closely it will match the Dungeons II version.
The Rest of the Live Announcements
Minecraft Live wasn’t only about ice and dimensions.
Minecraft Dungeons II launched on September 29 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, and Steam. A native Switch 2 version of Minecraft arrives on October 27 with Vibrant Visuals turned on by default, and players who own the game on the original Switch get a digital upgrade path.
Mojang also announced an official Creator Platform meant to make it easier to create, manage, and share Minecraft content. It has no name, date, or price yet. A sound effects pack for customizing game audio was announced as well, again without a date.
Outside the game, the first fully themed Minecraft land opens in 2027 at Chessington World of Adventures Resort near London, with an indoor coaster called Escape The Nether. The first official Minecraft hotel was announced alongside it. The stream also marked ten years of Minecraft Education, and there was no mob vote.
What Players Are Saying
Most of the noise is about the Sift, not the snapshots. Kotaku described a tennis match on Reddit between players who find the new dimension’s pastel look off-putting, players urging patience, and longtime fans who say every update gets this exact reaction. Readers on Nintendo Life were mixed too. One commenter said the Sift might pull them back into vanilla survival, while others wanted to see how hard it will be to reach.
Ice Caves drew less argument. Kotaku’s writer was already thinking about frozen zombie farms, and Snapshot 1 itself was covered as a light release, mostly bug fixes plus the Vulkan switch.
What We Still Don’t Know
There’s no release date beyond the fourth quarter of 2026, and no official drop name. The stats for the frozen zombie, ice balls, and freezing haven’t been published. It’s unclear whether Ice Caves will generate in old worlds. Sulfur caves now do through the retrogen change, but that says nothing yet about ice caves. Nobody knows how the Sift is reached in the vanilla game, and the Creator Platform is still an idea rather than a product.
Running a Server? Read This
Snapshots are for testing, and Mojang warns they can corrupt your world, so keep them away from anything you care about. The 26.4 snapshots list Java 25 as the minimum Java version.
Snapshot 1 also added a few things server owners will want to look at. There’s a new minecraft:mod_list packet that lets servers see which mods a client runs, though the vanilla client just sends an empty one. The server address field can now carry extra parameters, in a format similar to a URI query string, and the field grew to 1,024 characters. Three new server properties came with it: allowed-connection-ids restricts who can connect based on an ID in the address, status-contact-details shows contact info in the server list, and enable-legacy-status lets you turn off the old pre-1.7 ping handling. Mojang notes the address parameters aren’t encrypted, so don’t use them for anything security related.
If you’re thinking about hosting your own world for the Ice Caves drop, take a look at Cybrancee’s Minecraft server hosting plans before you move anything over.
26.4 By Player Type
You play Java survival: Nothing changes for you yet. Wait for the full release, and if you jump into a snapshot, back up your worlds first.
You play Bedrock: Your version of this drop is 26.70. Snapshots are Java only, so the first real look at Ice Caves on your side will come later.
You run a server: Check your plugins and mods before switching versions, make sure you’re on Java 25, and read up on the new server properties.
You make packs or mods: Data packs are on 122.1 and resource packs on 99.0 as of Snapshot 2, and both changed between the first two snapshots. Wait for the numbers to settle before publishing.
You want the Sift now: Play Minecraft Dungeons II, which launches today. The vanilla version arrives in 2027.
You’re worried about Vulkan: You can still choose OpenGL yourself in the Graphics API setting. The game just won’t switch you automatically after a crash anymore.
You’re on Switch: The native Switch 2 version lands on October 27, with an upgrade path from the original Switch.
Summary
Minecraft Java Edition 26.4 is the fourth game drop of 2026, planned for the fourth quarter, with Bedrock getting the same content as 26.70. The Minecraft Wiki calls it Fourth Drop 2026, and Mojang hasn’t set an official name or an exact release date.
The drop centers on Ice Caves, a new cave biome under frozen biomes with calcite, ice, icicles, and glowing ice crystals. It adds the frozen zombie, throwable ice balls, the Freezing effect, and freezing potions and arrows. None of this is in a snapshot yet.
Snapshot 1 arrived on September 22 with Vulkan as the default renderer, no automatic renderer switching after a startup crash, sulfur caves in upgraded old worlds, looser mushroom placement, new network and server properties, and pack versions 122.0 and 98.0. Snapshot 2 followed with better fog, a sky occluder, a redesigned F3 screen, and pack versions 122.1 and 99.0.
The Sift, Minecraft’s fourth dimension, is not part of 26.4. It arrives in Java and Bedrock in 2027 and is playable first in Minecraft Dungeons II, which launches September 29.
Other Live announcements include a native Switch 2 version on October 27, an official Creator Platform, a sound effects pack, and a Minecraft land at Chessington in 2027.
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Happy mining!
