Minecraft 26.2 Snapshot 4: Sulfur Polish & Peaceful Fixes (April 21, 2026)

Mojang shipped Minecraft 26.2 Snapshot 4 on April 21, 2026 — the fourth test build in the Chaos Cubed cycle, arriving exactly one week after the Sulfur Spikes-laden Snapshot 3. This one is not about new content. It is the snapshot where Mojang slows down and polishes everything that landed in the last three weeks, and if you run a server, the changes you care about are buried in the technical notes: data pack format 103.0, resource pack 86.1, four mobs that were silently broken on Peaceful, two brand-new entity attributes for nameplate control, and a handful of Vulkan stability patches that have been crashing unlucky Mac players for months.

If you have been holding off on testing Chaos Cubed because of the bugs, this is the snapshot to come back to.

Release Date

Minecraft 26.2 Snapshot 4 was released on April 21, 2026, on the Java Edition snapshot channel. It follows Snapshot 1 (April 7), Snapshot 2 (April 9), and Snapshot 3 (April 14). The full Chaos Cubed drop — Java 26.2 and Bedrock 26.30 — is still targeted for Q2 2026, so we are likely one or two more snapshots away from a release candidate.

Sulfur Cubes Now Spawn on Peaceful — And So Do Hoglins

The headline behaviour change in Snapshot 4 is a peaceful difficulty fix. Up until this snapshot, four mobs had a quiet bug where they refused to spawn on Peaceful even though they were always supposed to:

• Hoglins
• Piglins
• Ocelots
• Sulfur Cubes

All four are now spawning correctly on Peaceful. Technically a regression fix, but it matters more than it sounds. Sulfur Cubes are the mascot mob of the Chaos Cubed drop, and a Peaceful server with no Sulfur Cubes was effectively a server with no Sulfur Caves content. Build-focused communities running Peaceful can finally see the new biome the way it was designed.

While we are on Sulfur Cubes, Mojang also:

• Fixed the small variant size — naturally-spawned baby Sulfur Cubes were rendering at the wrong scale and now match the player.
• Polished the outer texture — the cube's eyes got more detail, which slicedlime amusingly described as "Sulfur Cube Eyeliner".
• Added bucket pickup sounds — using a bucket on a Sulfur Cube finally plays an audio cue, matching the rest of the bucket-mob family.

Sulfur Caves Are Less Aggressive

If you tested Snapshot 3, you probably noticed Sulfur Caves felt like a wall of pure sulfur and cinnabar. Snapshot 4 softens that:

• Granite and tuff are now dispersed between sulfur and cinnabar deposits inside Sulfur Caves, breaking up the colour and giving exploration more visual variety.
• Sulfur spike clusters are slightly shorter on average, which means less navigation friction when you are mining through.

The biome still reads as distinct — but it now feels like a real cave system instead of a candy-coloured swimming pool.

Two New Attributes for Server Operators and Map Makers

This is the part most patch-note write-ups skipped, and it is the part that matters most if you build maps or run roleplay servers. Snapshot 4 added two new entity attributes:

• minecraft:nameplate_distance — controls how far away (in blocks) an entity's nameplate is visible. Default 64 blocks. Range: 0 to 512.
• minecraft:below_name_distance — controls how far away (in blocks) the below_name scoreboard display is visible. Default 10 blocks. Range: 0 to 512.

For RP servers and minigame maps, this is a real quality-of-life win. You can finally hide nameplates behind walls without invisibility tricks, or push them out for spectator HUDs without scoreboard hacks. Datapack authors should expect to see these wired into next-cycle map releases.

New Languages: Swiss French and Chuvash

Snapshot 4 adds Swiss French and Chuvash to the language list. Chuvash in particular is a notable accessibility win — it is a Turkic language spoken by roughly a million people, and Minecraft is now one of the few major games to support it.

Technical Changes — The Server Operator's Section

The shorter list of things that will affect your server config and pack workflow:

• Data pack format bumped to 103.0 — your custom datapacks need their pack_format updated.
• Resource pack format bumped to 86.1 — same for resource packs.
• Slime sub-predicate renamed: minecraft:type_specific/slime → minecraft:type_specific/cube_mob. This is the one that will silently break advancements and loot tables that target slimes if you forget. Find-and-replace it before updating.
• minecraft:beds texture atlas removed — if you maintain a custom resource pack that overrides bed textures, the path layout has changed.
• New telemetry event graphics_capabilities — reports the graphics backend (Vulkan or OpenGL) and capability flags. Privacy-conscious server operators may want to flag this to community members before they update.

17 Bug Fixes — Vulkan Crashers Among Them

Snapshot 4 closes 17 issues. The two worth flagging:

• VSync framerate issues with Vulkan on macOS are fixed.
• Multiple Vulkan rendering crashes and visual glitches are patched.

If your players have been complaining about visual artefacts since the engine work in 26.1, this is the snapshot to point them at.

What This Means for Your Server

If you run a Vanilla snapshot test server, here is the quick checklist:

• Update your datapacks to format 103.0 before swapping over — old format will load but throw warnings.
• Replace minecraft:type_specific/slime in any predicate JSON with minecraft:type_specific/cube_mob.
• Take a world backup. Q2 2026 release candidates are getting close, but worlds opened in snapshots are still flagged "experimental" and will throw a warning on stable launch.
• Push a Mac-Vulkan retest to your Apple Silicon players — the framerate fix is real.
• Communicate the telemetry change if your community is privacy-sensitive.

Verdict — A Polish Snapshot, And That Is Good News

Snapshot 4 is small in raw content but heavy in signal. When Mojang stops adding things and starts fixing them, the drop is close. Expect Snapshot 5 next week, and a release candidate by mid-May at the latest if the Chaos Cubed Q2 window holds.

For server admins, the takeaway is straightforward: the Chaos Cubed snapshot line is now stable enough to run a public test server on without crash-loops. If you have been waiting, this is the moment.

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Snapshot 4 is the calm before the Q2 release. Get your test server running now — Chaos Cubed is the closest a Minecraft drop has felt to a major update in years.