Mojang revealed the next Minecraft game drop at Minecraft Live on September 26, 2026. It arrives later this year and brings the Ice Caves, a new underground biome, plus a Zombie variant called the Frozen. It has not shipped yet: Mojang says the features "will come out to testing soon". This post covers everything shown so far.
Ice Caves: The First Cold Cave Biome
The Ice Caves join the Dripstone Caves, the Lush Caves and the Sulfur Caves from the Chaos Cubed drop. They are the first really cold underground biome: caves full of ice, with plenty of calcite as well. Fog hangs in the distance and large icicles block your view, so you rarely see far.
The generation can get wild. The developers called out caves where lava runs through the ice as some of the most striking they found during development.
Ice Crystals
Ice Crystals are a new crystal block, similar to the amethyst block, that grows naturally on the floor of the Ice Caves. They are the main light source down there. You can place them anywhere and walk on them, and builders on the show immediately started talking about chandeliers.
Icicles Fall When There Is Too Much Light
This is the mechanic that changes how you explore. Icicles grow only on the ceiling, and they fall when they are exposed to too much light. In most caves you light everything up and move on. In the Ice Caves, a torch in the wrong spot can drop ice on your head. You can also place icicles on the ground yourself, and their tips give off small particles.
Easier Mining
After the Sulfur Caves, players pointed out that there were few ores to find. Mojang took that on board. In the Ice Caves, ores generate inside patches of stone and deepslate within the ice, so you can see where they are. Ice breaks quickly, so digging your way to them is fast too.
The Frozen: A New Zombie Variant
The Frozen are zombies that were trapped under the ice and are crawling back to the surface. They look like zombies covered in ice and snow, and they hit harder than you would expect:
- They charge at you. A hit gives you the Freezing effect.
- Freezing builds up over time, slows you down and deals extra damage. Next to other mobs this gets dangerous quickly, because you cannot outrun them.
- Some Frozen carry ice balls and attack from range. The damage depends on speed, and ice balls slow down sharply like snowballs, so a close throw hurts the most.
Ice Balls and Freezing Potions
A Frozen that carried an ice ball may drop it when you defeat it. You can use ice balls to brew Freezing potions, which slow down the target and deal a bit of damage. The developers expect them to be popular in PvP.
Everything Announced So Far
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ice Caves | New cold cave biome with ice, calcite, fog and large icicles |
| Ice Crystal | Light-emitting crystal block that grows on the cave floor |
| Icicle | Hangs from the ceiling and falls when exposed to too much light |
| Ores | Generate in visible stone and deepslate patches inside the ice |
| The Frozen | Zombie variant that charges and applies Freezing |
| Freezing effect | Slows you over time and deals extra damage |
| Ice ball | Ranged attack for some Frozen, dropped on defeat |
| Freezing potion | Brewed with ice balls, slows and damages |
Mojang did not give a version number, a name for the drop or a release date beyond "later this year".
What This Means for Your Server
Test in a separate world. When the Ice Caves reach snapshots (Java) or Preview (Bedrock), run them on a test server, not on your main world. A world that has been opened in a newer version should not go back to an older one.
The biome only appears in new chunks. Like every new biome, the Ice Caves will not show up in terrain your players already explored. For a long-running world, plan a border expansion or a new mining world when the drop releases, and pregenerate it before opening it up. Our chunk pregeneration guide walks through it.
Rethink lighting near spawns and builds. On servers that build in or around Ice Caves, lighting now affects what falls on your players. Worth mentioning to your community before someone lights up a shared cave.
PvP and faction servers: check your rules and plugins. Freezing potions slow and damage opponents. If your server limits certain potions or effects, check whether your rules and plugins cover the new one once it ships.
Wait for plugin and mod updates. Paper, Fabric and NeoForge need new builds for every drop, and plugins and mods follow after that. Our 26.1 update guide covers the routine that works for any version change.
What Else Was Announced
The Ice Caves were not the biggest news of the show. Mojang also confirmed that the Sift, the dimension from Minecraft Dungeons II, comes to vanilla Minecraft next year. See our Minecraft Live September 2026 recap for everything, and our guide to the Sift for what we know about the new dimension.
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