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A group of Minecraft players, standing on a stage while holding award trophies.
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Oskar Thysell
Written By
Oskar Thysell
Published
3/6/26

New on Java Realms: Realms Mapmaker Awards 2026

Celebrating hallmark achievements in the Java Creators program!

February 4th. The birth of German composer Johann Ludwig Bach. The start of the 300+ year Song dynasty in China. Also – the date of the first annual Realms Mapmaker Awards! Oh wait, did you miss it? No sweat, we learned from those aforementioned events and decided to upload it to Youtube!

If you don't have an hour and half to spare for a video that very well might just change your life, let me tell you about the event itself – members of our lovely community was able to vote on the most impactful maps of last year (2025), while also celebrating some historic maps that needed to get their props!

A Minecraft screenshot of a green hill, with large letters standing in the grass, forming the words "Realms Mapmaker Awards"

I want to extend my sincerest gratitude towards all the members of our community that made sure this event was possible – today we’ll be filling you in on all the winners and their respective awards!

How do I play the new Java Realms maps? 

Boot up Minecraft on your device of choice, then find Minecraft Realms in the starting menu. Press the “Configure” button, then choose the “Reset World” option on the Realm slot you’re ok with overwriting (or use the “Minigame” slot for minigames). Now you can pick the map you want to play from the corresponding categories! 

A Minecraft screenshot depicting a large group of players standing on a floating stage with a large red heart in the background.
A Minecraft screenshot of a presenter standing on a floating stage, presenting an awards before a crowd.
A Minecraft screenshot depicting a group of players standing on a stage, each of them holding award trophies.
Three-panel Minecraft map screenshot: a floating island with a dark portal and glowing ring, a rocky cliff with ruins and crates, and cherry trees under a starry night sky.

BEST SINGLEPLAYER EXPERIENCE 2025: EVERGROWTH

by Gamemode 4

Other nominees: A Fox’s Life 2, The Rocking Chair, Antitheist

 
Kicking off the list is the award for Best Singleplayer Experience 2025 – maps that provide our players with a rich and engrossing experience they can enjoy solo! Definitely a category with a lot of variety, as this can range from narrative experiences, to RPG platformer adventures, or this year’s winner Evergrowth! This puzzle map epic ticks off so many different boxes (while pushing them to their proper places) – mysterious, atmospheric storytelling, deep gameplay mechanics, fantastic visuals and a lot of logical challenges to test your mettle!
 
 
Festive Minecraft map interior with a tall Christmas tree, candy cane pillars, wrapped gifts, and a balcony sign reading “From the Shelves,” lit with warm holiday lighting.

BEST MUTLIPLAYER EXPERIENCE 2025: FROM THE SHELVES

by Surena Studio

Other nominees: Chill n’ Grill, Bleps: Nocked and Loaded, Adventures of T.Dee and T.Dum


Counterpoint to the last award there is the Best Multiplayer Experience 2025 – not surprisingly, with such a plethora of minigames that are ever so popular on Realms, we want to highlight our mapmakers who contribute to this category! Let’s all give it up for From the ShElves – released during our latest Java Realms Day celebration, this festive classic has players gearing up as either elves or naughty kids, the aforementioned trying to deliver the Java Realms day gifts to the tree, while the kids try to capture them and put them in glass jars! Firing on all cylinders, it delivers in presentation with great textures and sound design, a well-crafted map with emergent gameplay opportunities as well as a lopsided and dynamic game balance, where the many elves have to band together, rescue their captured comrades from their jars with the massive naughty kids towering over them!

 
Minecraft map view framed by stone pillars, looking across a tiled courtyard toward a symmetrical, classical-style building with columns and red banners in bright daylight.

BEST BUILD 2025: ETERNAL EMPIRE 

by Armero, MegaCow & Resister 

Other nominees: Crimson Abyss, Desolate Desert, Twilight Town 


The Best Build 2025 award is for our builders, those visual virtuosos that are masters of composition and design, who take full advantage of Minecraft’s whole block palette and what shapes can be created in a circle-less medium in order to conjure up resonating, images that transcend the flat surfaces we view them on. It is a craft with an extremely lofty skill ceiling, and this year’s winner Eternal Empire is a tour de force in both quality and quantity, with a vast, ancient Rome-inspired empire that has the attention to detail to ensure every section of the map is a joy to behold! 

 

Festive Minecraft map interior with a tall Christmas tree, candy cane pillars, wrapped gifts, and a balcony sign reading “From the Shelves,” lit with warm holiday lighting.

MOST INNOVATIVE MAP 2025: FROM THE SHELVES 

by Surena Studio 

Other nominees: 100 Ways to Die, Chill n’ Grill, Neural Networks 
 

Most Innovative Map 2025 – an award to celebrate those pushing the envelope in mapmaking, either by technological advancements, experimental game implementation, pioneering new narrative techniques or delivering entirely new experiences that the Minecraft world has seldom seen beforehand. This year’s winner, From the Sh- oh, wait. Uh, sorry I did not prepare a second speech, but the innovative capturing mechanics of the elves, the size differences between the two teams and gameplay implications this have, leads this to be a very unique game with a really fresh way to do team-based minigames – a worthy first two-time winner in the Realms Mapmaker Awards!

 

A dark Minecraft map scene showing a narrow urban ruin with tall, damaged buildings, a lone character on a cracked street, and a game menu overlay on the left.

BEST STORY 2025: ANTITHEIST 

by MrKisiel 

Other nominees: Against Iskerside, Adventures of T.Dee and T.Dum, Mega Parkour Irregular Non-Convex Rhombicosidodecahedron Mini 2 
 

Video games as vehicles for stories are as old as the medium itself – did you know, the original Pacman game is a faithful retelling of Dostoevsky’s seminal novel Crime and Punishment? Whether or not you can prove or disprove that statement, it’s true that many maps follow this formula to connect with the audience, putting our players in many fantastical and intriguing scenarios that we want to highlight with the Best Story 2025 award! In the end, the winner Antitheist excels in the sci-fi narrative of a player tasked with defeating the computer deity controlling the world you live in, with a lot of emphasis on atmosphere and ambience to convey the dire predicament the player is in! 

A Minecraft map screenshot of a looming, haunted-style mansion at night, viewed from stone steps, surrounded by autumn trees and lit by warm lights under a starry sky.

BEST UPKEEP: PUMPKIN PARTY REMASTERED 

by Plagiatus & dragonmaster95 

Other nominees: Duel TNT, Songs of Greavesoyl, Sprint Racer 
 

The Best Upkeep Award is for those heroes that might go unsung but should have Pavarotti and Mozart collaborate to make a five-act opera in their honor – our mapmakers that update their maps with new content and to work with newer Minecraft versions! I am prepared to sing, yodel and belt the praises of the winner Pumpkin Party Remastered, a worthy winner who first hit Realms in 2017, kept being updated and even received a remastered version that was playable up ‘til 2024! While later Minecraft versions have made it difficult to keep this version live, it has set a great precedent for other maps in the dedication to keeping it fresh and alive! Tip your local Java Creators map updater! 

A Minecraft map screenshot of a bright, columned hall with a central chest, colorful blocks on pedestals, and a rainbow stripe across the room beneath large text reading “Diversity 2.”

HALL OF FAME CLASSIC: DIVERSITY 2

by qmagnet 

Other nominees: Herobrine’s Mansion, Duel TNT, Missile Wars 
 

The Hall of Fame Classic Award is for maps that should be eternalized in history and added to the pantheon of landmark achievements in the craft, that we are grateful for having featured in the program. Yes, these are the maps your mom warned you about and no, none of this is hyperbole. I couldn’t think of a better first inductee than Diversity 2 – once the Guiness World Record Holder for the most downloaded Minecraft project, a constellation of legendary mapmakers banded together to deliver an engrossing, multi-genre challenge map of the highest caliber, forever raising the bar for what can be done when you take Minecraft content creation to the height of ones ambitions. While it’s no longer on Realms as it is not compliant with the latest version of Minecraft, you can download it from qmagnet’s website here. 

 

ALSO RELEASING TODAY 

 

A Minecraft map screenshot of a wooden pavilion overlooking a water-lined bridge leading into a lush landscape, with hanging lanterns and a distant sign reading “Mapmaker Awards.”

EXPERIENCE: REALMS MAPMAKER AWARDS 

by The Java Creators Community 
 

Have you ever wanted to run your own Realms Mapmaker Awards? Well, now you can, since we have also uploaded the build that was used during the event to Realms! This build was crafted as a dedication to former colleague on the team Nadja Anderberg from our community, so expect to see her face pop up every 7th block there! 

WRAPPING IT UP 

Learn to load this content into Java Realms by visiting the help site. If you haven't yet tried Realms for yourself, you'll have a blue diamond on the Minecraft Realms button, located on the main screen of Minecraft: Java Edition. Click that diamond, then follow the instructions to try Realms free for 30 days. 

Want to have your own Minecraft creations featured on Java Realms and on Minecraft.net? Head over to the Java Realms Content Creator Program page. If you have questions about this process, you can find me at Oskar Thysell on X. 

Keep it crafty! 

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