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2025/12/2

Minecraft’s new version numbering system

A small change for clarity

In the beginning, there was version 1.0. Then came 1.1, and 1.2, and 1.3, and 1.4 – you can see where I’m going with this can’t you? Minecraft’s version numbers went up incrementally with each major update until we hit 1.21 – the Tricky Trials update – back in June 2024. A lot happened that year, including our announcement that instead of providing one free update during the year, we instead wanted to release content more frequently, called game drops.  

But what did that mean for our version numbering? For a while, it meant we stuck with 1.21. When The Garden Awakens released in December 2024, it was version 1.21.50 on Bedrock Edition, and version 1.21.4 on Java Edition. And then we released Spring to Life. And Chase the Skies. With Mounts of Mayhem coming soon – we felt it was time to update how we version our Minecraft releases to reflect our new game drops strategy. 

A version number tells you which specific release of Minecraft you are playing. Minecraft prompts you to update to the latest version on both Java and Bedrock Edition by default. 

The change we’re making 

Going forwards, we’ll be numbering our versions based on the year. So, for both Bedrock and Java Edition, version numbers in the year 2026 will begin with ‘26’!  

Now, Bedrock and Java have different release cadences, so the numbers that follow “26” will be different. There are a few reasons for this (e.g. platform limitations, and the fact that Bedrock has more frequent releases throughout the year) but the shared prefix will make it easier for creators (and players) to know which release is which. 

 

The difference between version numbering in Bedrock and Java Edition 

While Bedrock and Java will share the same version number (based on the year), they will still differ slightly based on the release number. This is due to a few factors, including platform limitations and the different release frequencies on Bedrock and Java.

Here’s an example based on 2025. In 2025, we released three game drops (Spring to Life, Chase the Skies, and The Copper Age) and we have one more to come – Mounts of Mayhem! By applying the new version numbering system to 2025 as an example, you can get a better idea of where Bedrock and Java are the same, and where they are different! 

This table shows how the change in version number would work – and uses some of our releases from 2025 to illustrate it

This is an example to show how the new version number system would apply, using our 2025 releases to illustrate this. 

In both Bedrock and Java, the version number will be based on the year – and it will be followed by the release number, and then the patch or hotfix number. You can see this in the example above, and you can also see how Java applies the “patch” number as a separate number, whereas Bedrock counts upwards from the release number itself.  

There will be some small changes to how we name our snapshot versions on Java, too. Moving forwards, we’ll include the intended version in the names, so it’ll be easier than ever to see which snapshot contains features for which drop. E.g., the first snapshot for Mounts of Mayhem was 25w41a but would have been 25.4-snapshot-1 in this new system. 

 

What does this mean for players?

This change in our version numbering won’t have a huge impact on our players. We are, however, hoping it’ll make it easier for our creator partners and modders to understand which of our version numbers represent a game drop, and which of them represent patches or bug fixes to our drops.

We also hope it’ll make it easier for our community to talk about our game drops before they have a name! Before we moved to game drops, our community could use the next version number to talk about what was to come. With this new system, we hope you’ll be able to do that again!  

 

When it this happening? 

We will be using this new version numbering system for all of our releases starting next year – and you will see it in previews for those versions starting this week! 

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