Minecraft 26.4 Winter Drop: Ice Caves, the Frostbite, Brittle Ice and Every Snapshot So Far

The short version: Minecraft 26.4, the winter game drop, adds Ice Caves under cold biomes, the Frostbite zombie, a new Freezing effect and potion, Brittle Ice, Jukebox playlists, Packed Ice and Snow Bricks, a Cold Sulfur Cube, a full Calcite block set and the “Flurry” music disc. It also makes Vulkan the default renderer. It’s still in snapshots with no official release date. Past winter drops arrived in early December.

• 7Java snapshots so far
• 1New cave biome: Ice Caves
• 1New mob: the Frostbite
• TBARelease date

Ice Caves

Ice Caves are the newest cave biome, joining lush caves, dripstone caves, the deep dark and sulfur caves. They generate under cold biomes and are made mostly of Packed Ice and Calcite. There’s no glow lichen down there. The only natural light comes from Ice Crystals, which grow on packed ice and glow at light level 4. Icicles hang from the ceiling and can fall.

The Frostbite and Freezing

The Frostbite is a zombie variant found in Ice Caves. Its melee hits apply the new Freezing effect, which slows you and damages you over time, and it throws Ice Balls. Ice Balls also brew a Freezing potion. Snapshot 5 added an advancement, “What Goes Around Comes Around”, for killing a Frostbite with its own Ice Ball.

New blocks and features

• Brittle Ice cracks and breaks after a player or mob steps on it. It generates in ice cave crevasses, Frostbites can cross it safely, and Silk Touch collects it.
• Jukebox playlists: put a chest (or trapped or copper chest) on top of a jukebox and it plays the discs inside in sequence. Ejecting the current disc skips to the next one.
• Packed Ice Bricks (craft four Packed Ice in a 2×2 grid), with slabs, stairs, walls and a chiseled variant.
• Snow Bricks, with slabs, stairs and walls, crafted at a crafting table.
• Cold Sulfur Cube: a new sulfur cube type that floats on water and leaves Frosted Ice behind as it moves.
• Calcite block set (Snapshot 7): Calcite finally gets pillars, slabs, stairs and walls, plus Polished Calcite (four Calcite in a 2×2) and Polished Calcite Bricks. All of it also works in the stonecutter, and builders finally get a white wall that isn’t diorite.
• “Flurry” music disc by Hyper Potions (Snapshot 7): a chance to find it in igloo basement chests, comparator output 7 in a jukebox. Pair it with the new jukebox playlists.
• A hidden decorative block (Snapshot 7): Mojang only said it was added “somewhere”. Players have since pulled it from ancient city chests as Chiseled Soulshale. Mojang hasn’t said what it’s for.

Technical changes Java players will notice

• Vulkan by default (Snapshot 1): the “Default” graphics API now prefers Vulkan. See our system requirements guide.
• Old bugs fixed: MC-8959, the 13-year-old bug where you jump automatically when pushing against a block in water, is gone.
• Servers can see your mod list: a new mod_list packet lets modded clients tell servers which mods they run. The vanilla client sends an empty list.
• Redesigned F3 screen and fog (Snapshot 2): the debug overlay is easier to read, and with Improved Transparency on, the sky and clouds blend into terrain fog.
• Old worlds get sulfur caves generated below chunks from before Caves & Cliffs.
• Java memory (Snapshot 6): the game now sizes its own Java heap.
• OpenGL is back in testing (Snapshot 7): after big rendering changes, Mojang is temporarily testing both the Vulkan and OpenGL backends, so some upcoming builds may run on OpenGL. Data pack format is now 126.0, resource pack 102.0.

Snapshot timeline

How to try it

Open the Minecraft Launcher, enable snapshots in the Installations tab and pick the latest 26.4 snapshot. Snapshots need Java 25, which the launcher handles for you, and they can corrupt worlds, so test on a copy. Bedrock players can try the same content in Preview with the experimental “Drop 4 of 2026” toggle.