Minecraft's Winter Drop: Every Feature, Every New Block and When It Could Be Out

The last Minecraft game drop of 2026 has been in testing since the end of September as Java Edition 26.4 and Bedrock 26.70. It still goes by a placeholder name. Over seven snapshots it grew from one new cave biome into a full winter update, and on 3 November Mojang said the latest snapshot contained "the final gameplay features for the upcoming game drop".

We covered the ice caves themselves when they first arrived, in our guide to ice caves, frostbite and icicles. This post is the full list now that nothing else is being added, with most of the space given to the new building blocks, because that's where most of the later snapshots went.

What's in the drop

Here's everything, in the order it appeared in Java snapshots. Bedrock testers got the same features through Minecraft Preview builds.

The ice caves

Ice caves are an underground biome made mostly of packed ice and calcite. Ice crystals give off light level 4 and are the main natural light down there. Icicles grow up to five blocks long, fall on whatever is underneath, and melt when there's a light source nearby, so a torch is a way to clear a ceiling before you walk under it.

The trap to know about is the crevasse. These are gaps in the floor with water at the bottom, roofed over with brittle ice. Brittle ice forms wherever water touches blue ice, and it cracks once you stand on it, then keeps cracking until it breaks. Frostbites and strays can walk on it safely. You can't, so if the floor in an ice cave looks slightly different, go round it. You need Silk Touch to collect brittle ice for your own builds.

The frostbite and Freezing

The frostbite is a cold-climate zombie. Ordinary zombies turn into one if they spend time in powder snow, and a zombie wearing leather armour won't convert. Frostbites are immune to Freezing, still burn in sunlight, and attack at range with ice balls, which deal at most 4 damage. They also drop ice balls when killed.

That gives you the ingredient for the two new Freezing items. Brew an ice ball into an awkward potion to get a Potion of Freezing. Surround a lingering Potion of Freezing with eight arrows to get Arrows of Freezing. There's also a new advancement, "What Goes Around Comes Around". Separately, snowballs now knock back players, not just mobs, which will matter in a lot of minigames.

The new building blocks

The block finder above has the details, but the short version is that there are four families, and they behave differently enough that it's worth knowing which is which before you start building.

• Packed ice bricks are the most flexible. Craft them from a 2x2 of packed ice or cut them in a stonecutter, then make stairs, slabs and walls in the stonecutter. They aren't slippery. Chiseled packed ice, with a snowflake on its face, comes from two packed ice brick slabs or a stonecutter.
• Snow bricks are the awkward one. A 2x2 of snow blocks makes them, but nothing in the set can be made in a stonecutter, and you need a shovel to mine them, otherwise they drop nothing.
• Calcite gets a pillar, slab, stairs and wall. Polished calcite comes from a 2x2 of calcite and polished calcite bricks from a 2x2 of polished calcite, each with its own slab, stairs and wall. Every calcite block can also be made in a stonecutter.

Calcite is common in the new caves, so the calcite sets are the easiest of the lot to build with in survival. Snow is easy too, given a shovel and a snowy biome. Packed ice is the slow one, because each block takes nine ice.

There's one more: chiseled soulshale, which shows a singer's face and turns up only in ancient city chests. It looks forward to next year's dimension, which we covered in our explainer on the Sift.

Sulfur cubes and the new blocks

Sulfur cubes take on a behaviour, or archetype, from the block you feed them. The ice and snow blocks give them the Fast Sliding archetype, and the calcite blocks give Slow Bouncy. The drop also adds a Cold sulfur cube: feed one blue ice and it freezes water it touches into frosted ice, so it can make a temporary path across water.

Music and jukeboxes

Place a chest on top of a jukebox and the jukebox plays through the discs inside it as a playlist. We wrote a full guide to jukebox playlists when they arrived in Snapshot 4. The new disc, "Flurry" by Hyper Potions, has a 30% chance to appear in igloo basement chests and gives a comparator output of 7 when played.

When will it be released?

Mojang hasn't said, and won't until the bug-fixing stage is under way. What we can do is look at how the last few drops went from finished features to release. Every game drop so far has come out on a Tuesday.

Wilderness Bound went from its last snapshot to release in three weeks. Mounts of Mayhem took three weeks from first pre-release to release, and Mojang announced the date about two weeks ahead. If this year follows the same pattern, Tuesday 1, 8 or 15 December are the likely candidates. That is our estimate from past drops, nothing more. Holiday timing or a late bug could push it.

How to play it now

On Java, open the launcher's Installations tab, turn on Snapshots and create a new installation using the latest 26.4 snapshot. On Bedrock, join Minecraft Preview on Windows, Xbox or mobile. Make a copy of any world before opening it in a test build, because you can't move it back to the full release afterwards. The 26.4 snapshots also include Mojang's continuing work on a new graphics engine, which we explain in our guide to Minecraft's switch to Vulkan.

Sources

Features and dates are from Mojang's snapshot posts, including the official drop testing page, and from the release history of earlier drops. Block recipes were checked against the 26.4 snapshot changelogs. We haven't timed or benchmarked anything here, and the release window is our estimate.

Frequently asked questions

When is the Minecraft winter drop coming out?

Mojang hasn't announced a date. It calls this the final game drop of 2026, and every Minecraft drop so far has been released on a Tuesday. Going by the last two years, our guess is a Tuesday in the first half of December, but that's an estimate, not a confirmed date.

Is the winter drop finished?

The feature list is. Mojang said Snapshot 7, released on 3 November 2026, contained the final gameplay features. What's left is bug fixing in pre-releases and release candidates, and those haven't started yet.

How do you make packed ice bricks?

Put four packed ice in a 2x2 square on a crafting table, or put packed ice in a stonecutter. Unlike packed ice they aren't slippery, and you can mine them with any pickaxe without Silk Touch.

Can you make snow bricks in a stonecutter?

No. Snow bricks come from a 2x2 square of snow blocks, and their slab, stairs and wall all use a crafting table. You also need a shovel to mine them, or they drop nothing.

What is brittle ice in Minecraft?

A new ice block that forms where water touches blue ice. It cracks when you stand on it and eventually breaks, which is how crevasses in ice caves catch you out. You need Silk Touch to collect it.

Filed under Minecraft, Guides

Facts in this article were checked against developer and store sources on 8 November 2026. Prices, versions and dates change, so confirm on the official page before you buy.