Minecraft 26.4: Release Date and What the Snapshots Add So Far

Minecraft 26.4 still does not have a release date or a name. Mojang has now published six Java Edition snapshots for it (September 22, September 29, October 6, October 13, October 20 and October 27, 2026), and Minecraft LIVE on September 26 revealed it as a frosty drop built around a new Ice Caves biome and a frozen zombie variant, the Frostbite, but no snapshot post, preview note or show segment has named a date.

What Mojang has published is the pattern of the last three drops, and that pattern points to a rough landing zone. Below we cover where the release date stands, every 26.4 snapshot so far and what each adds, what the year-based version numbers mean, and how to install a snapshot without corrupting your main worlds.

Where the 26.4 Release Date Stands

Nothing official. None of the six snapshot posts gives a target window, and Mojang’s Minecraft LIVE recap calls this “the very first look at the next game drop” without naming it or dating it. Mojang has not published a 26.4 pre-release or release candidate yet, which in past cycles was the sign that a release was a few weeks out.

Here are the dates Mojang itself published for the three drops that used the new numbering:

• 26.1 (Tiny Takeover): first snapshot December 16, 2025, first pre-release March 10, 2026, released March 24, 2026. About 14 weeks.
• 26.2 (Chaos Cubed): first snapshot April 7, 2026, first pre-release May 26, released June 16, 2026. About 10 weeks.
• 26.3 (Wilderness Bound): first snapshot June 23, 2026, first pre-release September 1, released September 15, 2026. About 12 weeks.

Each cycle ran roughly 10 to 14 weeks from Snapshot 1 to release, with pre-releases and release candidates in the last two to three weeks. If 26.4 follows the same shape, a December 2026 release is the reasonable expectation, but that is our projection from the calendar, not a Mojang statement. Two things support it: the feedback link Mojang attached to the new features is labeled “gamedrop_winter26”, and last year’s final drop, Mounts of Mayhem (Java 1.21.11), released on December 9, 2025.

Bedrock Edition is on a separate track. It shares the year prefix but counts releases differently, so there is no “26.4” Bedrock snapshot to look for. Instead, Mojang’s Bedrock Preview 26.60.29 notes from September 30 file the same Ice Caves features under an experimental heading called “Drop 4 of 2026”, and Preview 26.70.20 on October 13 adds the next batch under the same label, followed by Preview 26.70.21 on October 20 and Preview 26.70.22 on October 28.

Every 26.4 Snapshot So Far

Snapshot 1: Vulkan by Default

Mojang’s Snapshot 1 post describes it as “a range of technical updates and improvements”, and the headline is that Vulkan is now the default graphics API. The “Default” option under Video Settings > Graphics API now behaves the same as “Prefer Vulkan”, and the game no longer switches your graphics API automatically after a startup crash. Vulkan entered testing with 26.2 Snapshot 1 in April, when Mojang said it would stay experimental until it was “stable, performant and ready”. The setting is still there to flip back to OpenGL.

The other player-facing changes:

• Worlds created before Caves and Cliffs now generate sulfur caves below old chunks when upgraded, so 26.2’s biome reaches long-running worlds.
• Red and Brown Mushrooms can be placed on any solid-topped block regardless of light level, matching Bedrock. They still will not spread unless the light is below 13.
• The auto-jump-in-water bugs are fixed, including MC-8959 (jumping when pressing against a block in water) and entities bouncing at water and lava edges.
• Item frames removed from ceilings now drop under the block instead of on top of it, and several item frame rotation and teleport desyncs are fixed.
• The generation of lush caves and dripstone caves is now properly defined (MC-262252).
• Smaller fixes cover distorted minecart sounds and Creative-mode ghost items from scroll-wheel duplication.

Snapshot 2: Fog, Sky and a New F3 Screen

Snapshot 2 is mostly about how the world looks at a distance. With the “Improved Transparency” video setting on, the sky and clouds behind distant terrain now blend into the render distance fog, so the hard line where the world ends disappears. In the Overworld, the bottom half of the sky now hides the sun, moon and stars as they set, which Mojang calls the sky occluder. The debug overlay (F3 by default) has been redesigned “to be easier to read and understand.”

It also fixes more than 50 bugs, including swamps generating far too many mushrooms after Snapshot 1’s mushroom change, donkeys, horses and mules in water that could no longer be ridden onto land, and a random crash during chunk generation.

Snapshot 3: Ice Caves and the Frostbite

Snapshot 3 is where the drop’s theme arrives. Mojang’s post opens by saying Minecraft LIVE “revealed the first look at our next game drop – and it’s frosty.” What it adds:

• Ice Caves, a new cave biome under the colder Overworld biomes, made mostly of Packed Ice and Calcite, with ores in pockets of stone and deepslate. Strays and Frostbites can spawn there, and there is no Glow Lichen.
• Icicles, which hang from cave ceilings, grow up to 5 blocks long in darkness, break near light sources, and hurt anything they fall on or that lands on them.
• Ice Crystals, a light-emitting block similar to Amethyst Clusters.
• The Frostbite, a zombie variant that switches between melee hits that apply Freezing and thrown Ice Balls. Zombies and Husks turn into Frostbites inside Powder Snow, and a Frostbite turns back into a Zombie if it stays underwater long enough.
• The Freezing effect, which slowly freezes you as if you were in Powder Snow. Leather Armor protects you from the damage but does not stop the effect. Ice Balls brew Potions of Freezing (including Splash and Lingering versions), and a Lingering Potion of Freezing surrounded by eight Arrows crafts Arrows of Freezing.
• Snowballs now knock back players.

Beyond the ice, the Friends list gets search and sorting, and a new Other Players screen (“P” by default) replaces Social Interactions for muting, reporting and friend requests.

Snapshot 4: Jukebox Playlists and Brittle Ice

Snapshot 4, out October 13, adds two features:

• Jukebox playlists. Put a single Chest, Trapped Chest or any Copper Chest directly above a Jukebox and it plays the Music Discs inside in slot order, swapping to the next disc when one ends and looping back to the start. Ejecting the current disc skips to the next one.
• Brittle Ice. A new block that starts to crack and eventually breaks once a player or mob stands on it. It generates only over crevasses in Ice Caves, can be collected with Silk Touch, and also forms when water flows next to Blue Ice. Frostbites can walk on it without breaking it.

It also gives Ice, Packed Ice, Blue Ice and Frosted Ice their own sounds, makes Zombies, Drowned and Husks immune to Freezing damage, and fixes 34 bugs. For server owners and modders, the Data Pack version is now 124.0 and the Resource Pack version is 100.1, after 122.0 and 98.0 in Snapshot 1. If you run a modded setup, keep our 50 best Minecraft mods list to hand, because every loader needs to catch up to 26.4 before you move a modded world across.

Snapshot 5: Packed Ice Bricks

Snapshot 5, out October 20, adds a building set and a few more ice touches:

• Packed Ice Bricks. Craft them from 2×2 Packed Ice. They come with Slab, Stair, Wall and Chiseled variants, and the Stonecutter makes all of them too.
• A new advancement. “What Goes Around Comes Around” (Adventure) is awarded for killing a Frostbite with an Ice Ball.
• Singing ice. A regular Ice block with Ice blocks all around it horizontally, Air above and Water below now has a chance to play an ambient sound.
• A “Prefer DXGI Present” video setting on Windows. It is off by default and Mojang calls it experimental; with it on, Mojang says you may see better IME and Variable Refresh Rate support and faster alt-tabbing in fullscreen.

Mobs can now also break Decorated Pots, Chorus Flowers and Speleothem blocks with projectiles in Adventure mode worlds, unless the mob_griefing game rule is off, and the snapshot fixes 30 bugs. The Data Pack version is now 125.0 and the Resource Pack version 100.2. On Bedrock, Preview 26.70.21 brought Packed Ice Bricks and the new ice sounds to “Drop 4 of 2026” the same day.

Snapshot 6: Snow Bricks and the Cold Sulfur Cube

Snapshot 6, out October 27, adds a second building set and a new kind of Sulfur Cube:

• Snow Bricks. Craft them from 2×2 Snow Blocks. They come with Slab, Stair and Wall variants, but unlike Packed Ice Bricks, the Stonecutter cannot make them. They only drop themselves when mined with a Shovel.
• The Cold Sulfur Cube. A new archetype a Sulfur Cube takes on when it absorbs a Blue Ice block. It behaves like the Fast Sliding archetype, but it floats and turns the water below it into a disk of Frosted Ice as it moves, similar to the Frost Walker enchantment. It only places Frosted Ice when it starts moving from the ground, and only where there is air above the water.
• Pickaxes for Packed Ice Bricks. Every Packed Ice Brick variant now needs a pickaxe to drop itself.
• Steadier Brittle Ice. Brittle Ice no longer cracks when a Stray stands on it.
• Ice Crystal sounds. An Ice Crystal on top of a block of Packed Ice now has a chance to play an ambient sound.

On the technical side, the game now sets its Java heap size (the memory it can use) automatically from your system’s RAM, using up to 25% of it with a maximum of 4 GB, and mobs falling through lava may take slightly less fall damage in some cases. The snapshot fixes 41 bugs, and the Data Pack version is now 125.1 and the Resource Pack version 101.0. On Bedrock, Preview 26.70.22 added Snow Bricks and the Cold Sulfur Cube to “Drop 4 of 2026” on October 28, along with Wandering Traders that sell one Ice Crystal for two Emeralds.

What Minecraft LIVE Revealed About the Drop

We flagged in our Minecraft LIVE preview that the September 26 show was the natural place to name the drop. It showed the drop instead: ice caves, icicles, ice crystals and the frozen zombie variant, which, Mojang’s recap admits, “doesn’t have a name yet.” Snapshot 3 later named it the Frostbite. The drop itself still has no name, and the last three drops were each named partway through their snapshot cycles.

One thing the show announced is not part of 26.4. The Sift, the new dimension from Minecraft Dungeons II, is coming to Java and Bedrock “next year”, according to the recap, so do not expect it in these snapshots. If you are playing the current release while you wait, our guide to finding sulfur caves covers the cave biome 26.2 added, and every other guide is on our Minecraft hub.

How the Year-Based Version Numbers Work

Mojang announced the new version numbering system on December 2, 2025. Version numbers now start with the year, so every 2026 release begins with “26”, followed by the release number and then a patch number. Java Edition 1.21.11, released December 9, 2025, was the last of the old 1.x line; 26.1 Snapshot 1 followed a week later.

On Java, the patch is a separate third number (26.1.1 and 26.1.2 were the Tiny Takeover hotfixes). On Bedrock, patches count up from the release number itself, which is why the two editions only match on the year. Snapshot names now carry the target version, which is why you are reading about “26.4 Snapshot 4” instead of a code like 25w41a, and why the community can talk about a drop before it has a name.

What a Game Drop Is Now

Since 2024, Mojang has replaced the single annual update with several smaller “game drops” a year. Each is a themed bundle: 26.1 was Tiny Takeover (redesigned baby mobs), 26.2 was Chaos Cubed (the Sulfur Cube and Sulfur Caves), and 26.3 was Wilderness Bound (the Dappled Forest and Abandoned Camps). Drops are free, arrive on both editions, and get their name partway through the snapshot cycle, so a frosty drop with no name six snapshots in is normal. If you mostly play with friends, Minecraft still holds its spot on our best co-op PS5 games list for good reason, and our best PC co-op games roundup covers what to play with the same group between drops.

How to Install the Snapshot Safely

Snapshots are Java Edition only. In the Minecraft Launcher, open the Installations tab, enable the “Snapshots” toggle, and either play the “Latest snapshot” entry or create a new installation and pick the 26.4 snapshot version. Mojang’s own warning is blunt: “Testing versions can corrupt your world, so please backup and/or run them in a different folder from your main worlds.” Do both: copy your saves folder somewhere safe, then set a different Game Directory in the installation’s settings so the snapshot never touches your main worlds, and treat any test world as disposable. On Bedrock, the same drop features are in Minecraft Preview as experimental features, which Mojang’s notes file under “Drop 4 of 2026”, so they only appear in worlds with experiments switched on.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does Minecraft 26.4 release? Mojang has not announced a date. Based on the 10 to 14 week cycles of 26.1, 26.2 and 26.3, December 2026 is a reasonable projection, but nothing official supports a specific day, and no 26.4 pre-release has appeared yet.

Does 26.4 have a name yet? No. Minecraft LIVE showed it as a frosty drop with Ice Caves and the Frostbite, and Mojang’s Bedrock notes call it “Drop 4 of 2026”, but it has no official name. The last three drops were named partway through their cycles.

How many 26.4 snapshots are there? Six as of October 29, 2026: Snapshot 1 on September 22, Snapshot 2 on September 29, Snapshot 3 on October 6, Snapshot 4 on October 13, Snapshot 5 on October 20 and Snapshot 6 on October 27. Mojang has released them weekly so far.

What is new in Minecraft 26.4? So far: Ice Caves, Icicles, Ice Crystals, Brittle Ice, Packed Ice Bricks, Snow Bricks, the Frostbite zombie variant, the Cold Sulfur Cube, the Freezing effect with its potions and arrows, jukebox playlists, a redesigned F3 screen and Friends list, better distance fog, and Vulkan as the default graphics API.

Is 26.4 coming to Bedrock Edition? Game drops ship on both editions, but Bedrock uses its own release numbering and its own Preview program, so there is no “26.4 snapshot” for Bedrock. The same features are in Bedrock Preview under “Drop 4 of 2026”.

Will my mods work on the 26.4 snapshot? Almost certainly not on day one. The Data Pack and Resource Pack formats have changed with every snapshot, so keep modded worlds on the release version until your loader confirms support.

Can I go back to 26.3 after opening a world in the snapshot? Not safely. Worlds saved in a newer version are not designed to load in an older one, so back up first.