Minecraft 26.4 Snapshot 2: the new F3 screen, softer render distance fog, and every change explained

Minecraft Java 26.4 Snapshot 2 released on 29 September 2026, a week after Snapshot 1 and three days after Minecraft Live named 26.4's real content: the Ice Caves drop.

That content is still not here. Snapshot 2 is another engine and interface snapshot, and two of its changes are ones you will notice in the first minute: the F3 debug screen has been redesigned, and the edge of your render distance now fades out instead of ending in a flat wall of fog. On top of that, the sun and moon no longer leak through the bottom of the sky, and 53 bugs are fixed.

The short version

Still no Ice Caves

If you came looking for ice crystals, icicles and the frozen zombie, they are not in Snapshot 2 either. Minecraft Live confirmed on 26 September that Ice Caves is the next drop (everything announced is in our Minecraft Live recap), and the drop's features normally arrive in later snapshots, one system at a time. Two engine-focused snapshots in a row is a normal start to a cycle, not a sign of delay.

The F3 screen, redesigned

The debug screen has looked roughly the same for over a decade: two walls of white text, left and right, with everything on screen at once and nothing to tell you where one kind of information ends and the next begins. Mojang's own description of the change is that the overlay was redesigned to be easier to read and understand.

What that means in practice is clear headers and grouped sections. Early hands-on coverage describes the layout like this:

• Left side: frame rate and refresh rate at the top, then your position and XYZ coordinates, then server and packet information, then a help section for the debug key combinations.
• Right side: the game version, memory usage, a detailed performance section, and system information, including whether the game is running on Vulkan.

That last point matters more than it looks. Snapshot 1 made Vulkan the default renderer, and the first thing anyone troubleshooting performance needs to know is which graphics API the game actually started on. Having it stated plainly on F3 makes the Vulkan versus OpenGL comparison much easier to do honestly: switch the setting, open F3, and confirm the renderer changed before you compare numbers.

Your customized F3 still works

The redesign is about presentation. The configurable debug system added back in 1.21.9 is still there: open it with F3 + F6 and set each of the debug entries to Off, In Overlay (shown when F3 is open) or Always (shown on screen all the time), with the built-in Default and Performance profiles. If you pinned coordinates or FPS to your screen permanently, that is the system to check after updating.

Render distance fog that fades

This is the visual change most players will feel without being able to name it.

Until now, the fog at the edge of your render distance blended into a solid, constant color. On a clear day you could see exactly where the world stopped: terrain, then a band of flat fog, then sky. In Snapshot 2, render distance fog fades opacity instead, so the far edge of the world dissolves into the sky behind it rather than turning into a painted wall.

A related change applies when Improved Transparency is enabled: the sky and clouds sitting behind distant terrain now also blend into the render distance fog. The practical result is the same idea from the other direction: the world feels less like it ends abruptly at your render distance.

If you play at a low render distance for performance, this is the snapshot where that stops looking quite so obvious. For what render distance actually costs and how it differs from simulation distance, see render vs simulation distance.

The sun no longer shows through the bottom of the sky

A small, long-standing visual bug got a proper fix. At low angles, especially when flying high or looking down around sunrise and sunset, the sun, moon and stars could show through the bottom half of the skybox, where they obviously should not be.

Snapshot 2 adds a sky occlusion pass: the bottom half of the Overworld sky now covers celestial objects. Rather than drawing a hard cut-off line, the edge is blended using the current fog color, so it should not be visible as a seam. It is enabled for the Overworld and disabled for the Nether and the End, controlled by a new environment attribute (below).

For shader and resource pack authors

This snapshot touches the shader pipeline again, right after Snapshot 1 reworked order-independent transparency:

• Added sky_occluder.vsh and sky_occluder.fsh, the shaders behind the new sky occlusion, which fill the lower sky with the fog color using a smooth border.
• Renamed screenquad.vsh to screentriangle.vsh.
• Removed OIT from clouds.fsh and added blit_clouds.fsh, which carries the OIT support for clouds instead.
• Resource pack format is now 99.0 (Snapshot 1 was 98.0).

Anything that overrides clouds.fsh or references screenquad.vsh by name will need updating. If you maintain core shaders, two snapshots in a row have now changed transparency and sky rendering, so test against each 26.4 snapshot rather than waiting for the release.

For data pack authors

• Data pack format is now 122.1 (Snapshot 1 was 122.0). A minor bump, so packs made for Snapshot 1 should mostly carry over.
• New predicate: below_heightmap, which checks whether a position is below a given heightmap's value. That is a cleaner way to test "is this under the surface" than the workarounds packs have used until now.
• New environment attribute: minecraft:visual/has_sky_occluder, which turns the new sky occlusion on or off per dimension. It defaults to true in the Overworld and false in the Nether and End, so custom dimensions can opt in or out.

If a pack fails to load after updating, how to install datapacks covers the usual reasons.

Bug fixes worth knowing about

Snapshot 2 fixes 53 issues, a large share of them text and localization corrections. The ones players will actually notice:

• Creative to Survival block-break delay (MC-312035): switching from Creative to Survival added a 5-tick delay to breaking blocks. Fixed.
• Horses, donkeys and mules stuck in water (MC-312066): they could not climb out of water onto full blocks without a partial block to step on. Fixed, which matters for anyone riding through rivers.
• Breaking armor stands or block entities near a sculk catalyst consumed your XP (MC-311924). Fixed.
• Random crashes during chunk generation (MC-312064), and too many mushrooms generating in swamps (MC-312046), the latter likely a side effect of Snapshot 1's mushroom placement change.
• Sky overlapping fog underwater at sunrise and sunset (MC-152504) and clouds rendering behind foggy terrain (MC-300250), both resolved by the new fog work.
• Smaller fixes: the advancements screen scrolling the wrong way horizontally, the game not minimizing when fullscreen loses focus, Right Shift not being recognized with some inputs, and mouse input on monitors at negative positions under Wayland.

Should you play it?

Frequently asked questions

When was Minecraft 26.4 Snapshot 2 released?

On 29 September 2026, one week after Snapshot 1.

Does 26.4 Snapshot 2 have Ice Caves?

No. Ice Caves, the frozen zombie and the freezing effect were announced at Minecraft Live and are expected in later 26.4 snapshots.

What changed on the F3 screen?

It was redesigned for readability, with clear headers and grouped sections: performance, position, server information and debug help on one side, and version, memory, performance details and system information, including whether Vulkan is in use, on the other. The configurable entries (F3 + F6) still work.

Why does the fog at the edge of my world look different?

Render distance fog now fades out instead of blending into a solid color, and with Improved Transparency on, the sky and clouds behind distant terrain blend into it too. The edge of your render distance looks softer as a result.

What are the pack formats in 26.4 Snapshot 2?

Data pack format 122.1, resource pack format 99.0.

Does Snapshot 2 need a new Java version?

No. It requires Java SE 25, the same as every version since 26.2.

What comes next

With two engine snapshots done, the next few should start bringing the Ice Caves drop: the biome, ice crystals and icicles, the frozen zombie, ice balls and the freezing effect. We will cover each piece once it is in a snapshot and testable. For everything confirmed about the drop so far, and about the Sift dimension arriving in 2027, read our Minecraft Live recap.