Minecraft is adding a gorgeous new biome, and it's home to the most useful mob ever

The first Minecraft Live of 2026 is in the bag, and lead designer Minecraft Jens Bergensten and the team at Mojang have plenty of news for us on Tiny Takeover. There’s also the reveal of the next update for the sandbox game, Chaos Cubed, which will introduce an adorable mob that brings an entirely new mechanic to your creations. “It’s impossible to predict everything you’ll do with anything we add, but I’m especially excited to see what you’ll get up to this time,” Bergensten remarks. He even promises “something so secret, I’m not actually supposed to mention it.”

To kick off today’s Minecraft showcase, we get a look at some new Bedrock features designed around the co-operative experience. Parties are coming to beta soon, and “will allow players to have a more social experience,” letting you quickly hop between vanilla worlds, Realms, and multiplayer adventures. We’re then shown a little flash of some community creations such as Soulsteel and Mob Maze, which you’ll find right now in the Bedrock server tab.

Game director Agnes Larsson gives us one final look at the Tiny Takeover update, which is confirmed to be releasing on Tuesday March 24. It’s one of the game’s biggest cosmetics overhauls ever, with over 100 new textures designed to make Minecraft’s little ones much more unique and adorable compared to their adult counterparts. They’re so cute that you can craft the new Golden Dandelion to keep them young forever, or at least until you feed them another one to reverse the effect.

But what about the next game drop after Tiny Takeover? It’s called ‘Chaos Cubed,’ and introduces a new underground biome, the Sulfur Caves, which Larsson says “is truly embracing the sandbox-ness of Minecraft.” It looks quite unlike anything we’ve seen before, with warm red Cinnabar blocks and yellow Sulfur blocks stacked across the walls and floors, and pillars that stretch right from the top to the bottom of its tallest caverns.

“The Sulfur Caves have been inspired by hot springs all over the world,” principal game designer Daniel Jansson explains. “If you look at the water, there is some sort of gas on the water’s surface.” These pools have a more potent Sulfur variety on the bottom, and stepping too close to the gas will cause nausea, with your view swinging wildly back and forth in a manner that I’m certain the motion sick among us will want to switch off.

This new area is also home to a new mob: the Sulfur Cube. Resembling a yellow slime, this adorable critter “has a little secret” – the ability to absorb other blocks. If you hold a block it likes, then drop it for them, they’ll suck it inside their body, at which point they’ll stop moving of their own accord and become more of a ‘ball’ that you can push around the environment. I’m choosing to believe that the Sulfur Cube enjoys this entire process, because I couldn’t deal with the moral ramifications if it didn’t.

The type of block a Sulfur Cube sucks up determines the way it behaves. Ice will cause it to slide, for example, Wool makes it floatier, and metal makes it heavier. “Depending on where you hit it, it will move in different directions,” Jansson notes, “but there’s some element of skill to be able to make it bounce the way you want, which I think adds some interesting dynamics to minigames.”

Among the initial uses we get to see are shuffleboard, tennis, golf, and dodgeball. “I think I can see people doing pinball machines, with pistons and everything,” gameplay tech lead Marco Ballabio suggests. “I’m sure they’re going to do super creative things.” Jansson comments that it works well in redstone contraptions and traps. “Overall, I think it’s quite a chaotic creature,” Larsson laughs.

Much like a regular slime, you can hit the Sulfur Cube to split it into two smaller versions, and they’ll then grow up to become regular-sized ones. Larsson says she’s excited to see how players use it. “Instead of creating a specific experience, we try to enable and inspire the players to create their own experiences, and I think the Sulfur Cube really follows that.”

There’s one final reveal, and it’s a big one: Minecraft Dungeons 2. That’s right, the loot-filled, Diablo-style ARPG twist on Minecraft is getting a sequel, and it’ll be launching in 2026. “You’ll visit never-before-seen locations, battle new foes, and do your best to save a world in crisis, alone or with up to three friends,” Bergensten confirms. I loved the first, so I’m happy to hear that.

“We love all the feedback and comments you share with us,” Bergensten says to the community, “and though you might not see us acting on them immediately, it really helps us in our thinking about the long-term vision for Minecraft. Keep on making yourselves heard, and the future of the game will be better for everyone.”