Minecraft Live wrapped on September 26, and it brought the biggest dimension news in fourteen years.
Here are some important information. The final game drop of 2026 is a frozen one, and in 2027, Minecraft is getting a fourth dimension.
The Sift
Minecraft has had three dimensions since the End arrived in 2011. The Overworld, the Nether, and the End. That is about to change.
The Sift is coming to Java and Bedrock Edition next year, making it the first new dimension in over fourteen years. Mojang describes it as beautiful, vibrant, and teeming with souls. The broadcast showed a glimpse of the dimension itself along with one of the mobs that lives there.
Details are thin on purpose, and that is the point. The Sift is debuting in Minecraft Dungeons II, which released on September 29, rather than in Minecraft itself. In Dungeons II you reach it through rifts that appear throughout the world, and it contains areas called the Meadow and the Carapace. So if you want an early look at what the Sift actually feels like, the sequel is where to find it.
For Minecraft proper, 2027 is the time. Expect a long run of snapshots and previews before it lands.
Ice Caves
The last game drop of 2026 goes underground. Ice caves are a new cave biome, joining dripstone, lush, and sulfur caves, and they generate beneath the colder biomes in the Overworld.
The terrain is built mainly from packed ice and calcite, with patches of snow on the ground. Dirt and granite do not generate here, and neither does glow lichen, which has an interesting knock-on effect we will get to. Ores still appear, embedded in pockets of stone and deepslate.
Icicles hang from the ceiling and grow under packed ice, reaching up to five blocks long. Larger ones made of packed ice generate on both the floor and the ceiling. They behave like dripstone and sulfur spikes, which means they are a hazard as much as decoration. If light levels nearby get high enough, there is a chance an icicle will drop, and it damages whatever is underneath. Landing on one deals extra damage. They also break when exposed to light, so lighting up an ice cave actively destroys them.
Ice crystals grow on top of packed ice and work like amethyst clusters. They emit light and can be placed facing any direction, which makes them useful for building. Because glow lichen does not generate in ice caves, ice crystals are the only natural light source down there. Worth knowing that they are currently smaller than intended, which Mojang has flagged as a known issue in testing.
Frostbite
The new hostile mob is a zombie variant, and it now has a name. During Minecraft Live it was still unnamed, but the testing builds call it the Frostbite.
It fights at both ranges. Up close it uses melee attacks that apply the new Freezing effect. At distance it throws ice balls, which deal four damage scaling down with velocity and knock you back. It switches between the two based on how far away you are and whether it still has ice balls to throw. There are baby variants too, with their own throwing animations.
A few behaviors worth knowing before you meet one. Frostbites spawn in cold and icy biomes, including ice caves alongside strays. They can stand on top of powder snow and are immune to freezing themselves. They drop rotten flesh and ice balls. And if one stays underwater long enough, it turns back into an ordinary zombie.
The conversion runs the other way too. Zombies and husks that end up inside powder snow now transform into Frostbites.
Freezing
The Freezing effect makes you shake, cuts your jump height, and eventually deals damage. It gradually freezes you as though you were standing in powder snow. Leather armor stops you from actually freezing, the same way it works with powder snow, but it does not stop the effect being applied or remove it once it is on you.
Here is the good part. You can turn it against them. Ice balls dropped by Frostbites brew into a Potion of Freezing, including splash and lingering versions, and dipping arrows into a cauldron of it gives you Arrows of Freezing. Mobs vulnerable to freezing take five times the damage from it, so this is a genuinely strong weapon.
How to Try it Now
Testing opened on September 30 and the features are experimental, so they are not in the main game yet.
Java players enable snapshots in the Installations tab of the launcher. Bedrock players can switch on preview or beta builds, with preview available on Xbox, Windows, and iOS, and betas on Android through Google Play. The current Bedrock build is Preview 26.60.29. Anyone with an active Realms subscription can also create a free testing Realm to try the features with friends.
One warning that Mojang repeats and we will repeat too. Testing builds can corrupt your world. Back up before you touch them, and run them in a separate folder from anything you care about. If you want to explore ice caves with friends without risking your main world, spinning up a separate world for it is the safer route.
Everything Else From the Show
Minecraft World opens in London in 2027 at Chessington World of Adventures Resort. It includes the first Minecraft World Hotel, with themed rooms and a deep-sea diner, plus Escape the Nether, which Mojang is billing as the first Minecraft rollercoaster. It runs both indoors and outdoors.
Minecraft Dungeons II launched on September 29. The story picks up after the Arch-Illager and the Orb of Dominance, with an Illager High Council causing trouble and the ecosystem out of balance. The structural change from the first game is a connected world rather than level-based missions, and the addition of jumping.
Sound effect packs are coming to Marketplace.
Minecraft arrives on Nintendo Switch 2 on October 27.
There is also a community challenge running from the last drop, aiming for 50 million straw beds and 200 million cushions placed across the Overworld. Mojang showed off cushions being used as monorails, pillars, and ladders, which was not the intended purpose and is clearly better for it.
You can view the Minecraft Live: September 2026 Recap here or the Minecraft Preview 26.60.29 here.
This site works best with JavaScript enabled.