Minecraft Java 26.4 Snapshot 6 released on 27 October 2026. After Snapshot 5 gave builders packed ice bricks, this one adds a second winter block family, snow bricks, and a new kind of sulfur cube: the cold sulfur cube, which floats on water and freezes a path under itself. There is also a change every Java player will feel without noticing: the game now picks its own memory size from your RAM.
Image: Mojang Studios, from the official 26.4 Snapshot 6 announcement.
RateData pack 125.1, resource pack 101.0
XP levelJava 26.4 Snapshot 6
Build time27 October 2026
DifficultyIntermediate
Snapshot features can change before release. Test them in a copy of a world, never your main save. The Vulkan crash when resizing the game window is still a known issue (MC-312444), so play fullscreen or switch the renderer if you hit it.
Everything new, at a glance
| Change |
What it does |
| Snow bricks |
New block, crafted from 2x2 snow blocks |
| Slab, stairs, wall |
Crafting table only, not the stonecutter |
| Cold sulfur cube |
Absorbs blue ice, floats, freezes water under it |
| Java memory |
Heap set from your RAM: up to 25%, at most 4 GB |
| Packed ice bricks |
All variants now need a pickaxe to drop |
| Brittle ice |
Strays no longer crack it |
| Ice crystals |
Ambient sound when packed ice is below |
| Bug fixes |
42 issues fixed |
Snow bricks
The rules from the changelog:
- Recipe: four snow blocks in a 2x2 square make snow bricks.
- Variants: a slab, stairs and a wall. Unlike packed ice bricks, they cannot be made in a stonecutter, so they cost crafting-table recipes.
- Tool: snow bricks only drop themselves when mined with a shovel. Break them by hand or with a pickaxe and you get nothing.
- Sulfur cubes: snow bricks belong to the Fast Sliding archetype.
Snow blocks are cheap: a snow golem standing in a cold biome leaves a trail of snow you can shovel up all day, four snowballs make a block, and four blocks make four bricks. With packed ice bricks from Snapshot 5, 26.4 now has two full winter building sets, one white and matte, one blue and glassy.
The cold sulfur cube
The sulfur cube changes how it moves depending on the block it absorbs. Snapshot 6 adds a new special archetype:
- Trigger: the cube absorbs a blue ice block. Blue ice moves out of Fast Sliding into this new archetype.
- Movement: the same as Fast Sliding, so it slides a long way, but it is buoyant and floats on water.
- The trick: when it moves, it replaces the water below it with a disk of frosted ice, like the Frost Walker enchantment.
- Conditions: it only places frosted ice if it started moving while on the ground, and the water needs air above it.
In practice that is a sulfur cube that makes temporary ice bridges as it slides into water. Frosted ice melts back into water over time, so the path does not last. Our sulfur cube guide covers how absorption works and how to move a cube where you want it.
Minecraft now sets its own memory
This one affects everybody who plays Java. In the official words: the game now automatically sets its Java heap size based on your system's RAM, using up to 25% with a maximum of 4 GB.
| Your RAM |
25% of it |
What the game takes |
| 8 GB |
2 GB |
2 GB |
| 16 GB |
4 GB |
4 GB |
| 32 GB |
8 GB |
4 GB (the cap) |
For vanilla on a 16 GB machine that is more than the old 2 GB the launcher used to give. Modpacks still need you to set the number yourself, because 4 GB is the ceiling. Mojang's notes do not say how this interacts with a custom -Xmx you already put in your launcher profile, so check the JVM arguments of your profile after you update. Our guide to allocating more RAM shows where that setting is in every common launcher and why giving too much makes the game stutter.
Other changes
Packed ice bricks need a pickaxe. All packed ice brick variants (bricks, chiseled, slab, stairs, wall) now only drop themselves when mined with a pickaxe.
Brittle ice. Strays no longer crack it, like frostbites. Several fixes follow the same idea: entities no longer crack brittle ice when mob_griefing is off, players inside spawn protection no longer crack it, shulkers do crack it now, lily pads can be placed on it, and iron golems summoned by villagers no longer spawn on it.
Ice caves. Villagers and zombie villagers that spawn in ice caves now use the snowy look instead of the plains one. A bug that generated gravel, diorite and andesite blobs twice in ice caves is fixed.
Advancements. "A Furious Cocktail" and "How Did We Get Here?" now require the new Freezing effect too.
Lava. Mobs falling through lava may take slightly less fall damage in some cases.
Old bugs fixed. Among the 42 fixes: small cubes split from a bucketed sulfur cube no longer despawn, and some villager trades that differed from 1.21.11 are back to normal.
For data pack and resource pack authors
- Pack formats: data pack 125.1, resource pack 101.0. Minimum Java runtime is still Java 25.
- Sulfur cube archetypes: a new optional
location_based_effects field, in the same format as a location-based enchantment effect (level-based values are evaluated at level 1). That is what powers the cold cube's frosted ice.
- Density functions:
gradient accepts a Vertical Anchor for from_coordinate and to_coordinate on the y axis; new domain_warp offsets the sampled coordinates of an input function. Mojang warns it can hurt performance if the offsets change fast.
- Structure pool elements: a new optional
corner_constraint field samples a density function at the corners of the bounding box.
- Tags: new entity tags
#swimming and #flying, fluid tag #swimmable, item tag #sulfur_cube_archetype/cold. Icicles and sulfur spikes join #dangerous_for_teleportation.
- Resource packs: new texture
block/snow_bricks.png and sound event block.ice_crystal.ambient; the block/cube_top model is removed.
What this means for 26.4
Six snapshots in, the drop is still adding small building sets and polish rather than new systems, the usual sign that pre-releases are close. Mojang has not announced a release date; our 26.4 release date page tracks the window and everything confirmed so far. Bedrock players got the same ice caves content as an experiment in the Bedrock 26.60 update.
Frequently asked questions
How do you craft snow bricks in Minecraft?
Put four snow blocks in a 2x2 square on a crafting table. The slab, stairs and wall are crafted on a crafting table too; the stonecutter does not make them.
A shovel. Snow bricks only drop themselves when mined with a shovel; any other tool or your hand drops nothing.
How do you make a cold sulfur cube?
Let a sulfur cube absorb a block of blue ice. It becomes the cold archetype: it floats on water and freezes the water under it into frosted ice when it moves.
How much RAM does Minecraft use by default now?
From Snapshot 6, the game sets its own heap size: up to 25% of your system RAM, at most 4 GB. On a 16 GB PC that is 4 GB, on an 8 GB PC 2 GB.
Data pack 125.1 and resource pack 101.0, with Java 25 as the minimum runtime.
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