Minecraft has had three dimensions for as long as most of its players can remember: the Overworld, the Nether and the End. At Minecraft LIVE on September 26, Mojang Studios confirmed a fourth. It is called the Sift, and it will come to Minecraft Java Edition and Bedrock Edition in 2027. It will be the first new dimension added to the game in more than 14 years.
You won't have to wait until next year to see it, though. The Sift debuts in Minecraft Dungeons II, the action RPG spin-off that launches on September 29, three days after the broadcast. Mojang is treating the sequel as the dimension's first public outing and the base game as its permanent home.
What the Sift is
Mojang describes the Sift as a vibrant, colourful reality that is "teeming with souls". It is a clear visual break from the dark reds of the Nether and the void-black of the End. In Dungeons II, it breaks into the Overworld through rifts that open across the game's new interconnected world. Step into one and you are carried across to the other side.
Once inside, the rules change. Xbox Wire's breakdown says the Sift has its own mobs, some companions and some threats, all unique to the dimension. Its hazardous new blocks change how you have to move through it, and it has "shifting tides" that can affect your character and anyone near you. Mojang has named two of its biomes, the Meadows and the Carapace, and says it is holding the rest back for players to find themselves.
How it gets into Minecraft
Mojang said very little about how the Sift will work in Minecraft proper. It gave no word on how players will reach it, whether there is a portal to build, or how the vanilla version will differ from what Dungeons II shows. It gave no release window more precise than 2027 either. The broadcast did include a short, clearly in-development look at the dimension running in Minecraft itself, along with one of the mobs that lives there.
What Mojang did make clear is that Dungeons II is the preview. If you want a sense of the mobs, blocks and biomes that will eventually reach survival worlds, the spin-off is where you get it first. That is an unusual order for Mojang to do things in. Spin-offs have borrowed from the main game for years, but this is the first time the main game will take something as large as a whole dimension from one of them.
The gap is worth putting in context. The Nether arrived in 2010 and the End followed with the game's full 1.0 release in 2011. Every update since then, from the ocean overhaul to Caves & Cliffs and the smaller game drops that replaced the big annual releases, has reworked or added to those three places rather than adding a new one.
Minecraft Dungeons II on September 29
The dimension is the headline act in Dungeons II. It is set after the defeat of the first game's Arch-Illager and the Orb of Dominance, with a world whose ecosystem has fallen out of balance and an Illager High Council now pulling the strings. Where the original Minecraft Dungeons was built from separate levels, the sequel links its areas into one connected world, and it adds jumping, which the first game never had.
It launches on September 29 on Xbox Series X|S, PC through the Xbox app and Steam, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. It supports Xbox Play Anywhere on the Microsoft side.
Ice Caves and a freezing zombie in the next game drop
The next Minecraft game drop also got its first look. It adds Ice Caves, a new underground biome in the same family as the dripstone, lush and sulfur caves. They are filled with ice and calcite, plus two new features: icicles that grow naturally from the ceiling, and ice crystals that grow from the floor and give off a soft light.
They come with a new, still unnamed frozen zombie variant. Its hits deal damage and also apply a freezing effect, and some of them throw balls of ice. Mojang tied the drop to its stated long-term push towards adventure and harder challenges in the base game. It has not given a date yet.
Everything else from the show
- Minecraft World, the Merlin Entertainments theme land, opens in 2027 at Chessington World of Adventures Resort near London. It includes a Minecraft World Hotel and Escape the Nether, which Mojang calls the first Minecraft rollercoaster.
- Sound Effects Packs are coming to Minecraft Marketplace.
- Minecraft on Nintendo Switch 2 arrives on October 27.
- Minecraft Education marked its tenth birthday.
- Mojang also restated its creator platform plans, which aim to make it easier to build, manage and share Minecraft content, and relaunched its feedback site at feedback.minecraft.net.
The Sift is the one that will last, though. Dungeons II will give players a taste of it in three days, and everyone else gets the full dimension next year.
