For fourteen years, Minecraft players have had exactly three places to go. The Overworld, where you build. The Nether, where you get lost and set on fire. The End, where you fight a dragon once and mostly come back for the elytra. Mojang added oceans and frogs, later an entire Deep Dark, but it never added a new dimension. That changed at Minecraft Live on September 26, 2026, when Mojang revealed The Sift, an official fourth dimension coming to Java and Bedrock in 2027.
The live chat, by most accounts, lost its mind. Here's what we actually know so far, plus how you can visit an early version right now.
The fourth dimension, finally
Mojang calls The Sift "beautiful, vibrant, and teeming with souls." It's the first new dimension in vanilla Minecraft since The End arrived with the full 1.0 release in 2011. Mojang's Jens "Jeb" Bergensten, whose team built The End in a famously quick, hackathon-style rush, said this time the team wants the new world to feel "complementary to the existing dimensions." In other words, they're taking their time. The End was made in a hurry, and it shows.
No exact release date yet, only "2027." Minecraft updates now arrive as several smaller game drops per year, so The Sift could land at any point in that window.
Pink grass, white trees and a squeaky little Blub
The teaser was short, but fans have already picked it apart frame by frame. Mojang named two areas on stage:
- The Meadow: colorful grass with new plants and animals
- The Carapace: a desert-like zone with huge bone structures, a bit like the fossils you find in the Nether
The community-run Minecraft Wiki has gone further, cataloguing pink and green meadows next to a dense white forest. It also lists blocks like turquoise-tinted stone and salmon-colored dirt. Those names are unofficial, so treat them as placeholders. The trees are the standout: thick, pale trunks with white leaves and hanging foliage that drips from the canopy like stalactites.
The one creature with an official name so far is the Blub, a small, passive mob that squeaks. It's the sort of mob that will have its own plush in every toy shop by Christmas 2027. Kotaku's John Walker, who has already seen the dimension in another game (more on that below), said some of its creatures look a lot like Pokémon. Make of that what you will.
I'll admit I watched that teaser more times than I'd like to say, mostly trying to spot a portal frame. There isn't one. What we don't know is just as important. Mojang hasn't explained how you'll get there, what the "souls" part actually means in gameplay, or whether there's a boss. The End has a dragon. The Nether has the Wither, sort of. The Sift has a squeaky rabbit-thing, for now.
You can visit it early, sort of
Here's the clever part. The Sift didn't debut in vanilla Minecraft at all. It first appears in Minecraft Dungeons II, which launched on September 29. In the sequel, rifts open across the Overworld, and stepping through one drops you into The Sift for a short run before you close it behind you.
Walker described it as a "blue-pink world" with "rainbow-colored streams and blue-ish grass," calling it "super-pretty and always weird." He also suspects Mojang is keeping the deeper version for 2027, since visits in Dungeons II are brief. That fits what Mojang has said: the vanilla Sift may look and play differently.
So if you want to see it with your own eyes before 2027, Dungeons II is the only way. Just know you won't be mining or building there. It's a dungeon crawler, not a survival game.
The comments section says it all
Minecraft's own highlight video from the show has 2.4 million views, and the comments read like a group chat after a surprise announcement.
The top one, from @Leclos21, sums up a decade of waiting in two lines: "END dimension / A totally NEW dimension." @mailcs06 was relieved about the detail that mattered most: "Very glad that The Sift isn't gonna be exclusive to Dungeons 2." And @iceyco6 managed to be grateful and petty in the same breath: "Thank you for the new sift dimension, i am so happy, now i can forgive you for not adding anything in the end dimension."
That last one stings for a reason. The End hasn't had a big update in years, and players have been asking for one for almost as long. A whole new dimension is a pretty good apology.
Others were just surprised it happened at all. @Spamsei1997 described the live chat going from mild interest during the Ice Caves reveal to chaos "the few seconds of the sift" were on screen. @TheGreatOrange kept it simple: "We were all here for the 4th dimension!"
Meanwhile, the next update is much colder
The Sift is the 2027 headline, but there's something closer. The next game drop adds Ice Caves, a new cave biome full of icicles and glowing ice crystals. It also brings a frozen zombie variant that can freeze you and, in some cases, throw ice balls. Mojang hasn't named it yet. "Frosty Steve" is presumably not on the shortlist.
Minecraft Live also confirmed a few other things worth knowing:
- Minecraft lands on Nintendo Switch 2 on October 27, with Vibrant Visuals support
- A new Creator Platform to make sharing community content easier
- Minecraft World, a theme park at Chessington World of Adventures near London, opens in 2027 with a hotel and a rollercoaster called Escape the Nether
That means 2027 is shaping up to be the year you can ride the Nether near London and explore a brand-new dimension on your couch. Not bad.
Worth getting excited about?
Yes, with one caution. To be honest, I didn't expect Mojang to ever touch the dimension list again. A new dimension is the biggest change to Minecraft's structure since 2011, and the early footage looks nothing like the Nether's lava or The End's empty purple islands. The colorful, gentle look also hints at a dimension built for exploring, not just surviving.
The caution is the date. "2027" is a whole year, and Mojang has been careful not to promise much beyond a couple of biomes and one squeaky mob. Expect more details in snapshots and previews well before the full release.
