Minecraft Beta & Preview 26.50.25, Cushions, Camps, and a Flood of Fixes
What Changed
Minecraft Beta & Preview 26.50.25, part of the ongoing Drop 3 2026 wave, rolled out on 11 August 2026 for Xbox, PlayStation, Windows, iOS (Preview) and Android (Beta). It's a broad polish pass that touches almost every new feature introduced in Drop 3, plus a healthy stack of long-standing bug fixes.
Abandoned Camps
- Seagrass inside camps is now always waterlogged properly, so underwater camp ruins look correct.
- Duplicate Cushion entries in campsite loot were removed; Barrels can now reward a White Cushion or Straw Bed.
- Firework Rockets swapped out of camp loot tables, Gunpowder takes their place.
- Explorer Maps found in camps will no longer point you back to the very same biome you looted them from (a big quality-of-life win for exploration).
Cushions
- Cushions can now share a block space with Honey Blocks, Sniffer Eggs, and Chains.
- Chains no longer count as full blocks, which also means ladders, vines, lanterns, and bells can no longer attach to them, a physics clean-up with wider implications.
- Breaking particles now correctly appear at the Cushion itself, not in the floor beneath it.
- The sit-and-stand hint now reads "Press SHIFT to get up", matching Java Edition.
- Summoning a Cushion without a colour (e.g., via
/summon) now produces White instead of Black, matching Java Edition. - Cushions can no longer be broken by players in Adventure mode.
Wool & Concrete Stairs and Slabs
- Wool Stairs and Slabs now break faster with Shears, matching full Wool blocks.
- Wool Stairs and Slabs no longer emit vibrations when their item form is dropped, aligning with full Wool block behaviour.
- Concrete Stairs and Slabs can now be crafted in the Stonecutter in all 16 colours.
- Explosion drop decay rules now apply correctly to Wool and Concrete Stairs/Slabs.
Gameplay & World Generation
- Lava lakes generated inside villages no longer replace nearby beds or doors with stone, no more mysteriously stone-filled bedrooms on world load.
- Fixed Saplings not growing when Leaves were placed directly above them.
- Cherry, Pale Oak, and Poplar Saplings are no longer flammable, bringing them in line with every other Sapling type.
- Using a lava bucket on a cow no longer (hilariously, but accidentally) produced a milk bucket.
- Husks and Zombies now keep their held items and armour when they transform into Drowned.
Audio & UI
- Multiple jukeboxes can now independently play the same record simultaneously.
- Jukebox audio now plays from the correct position for players who walk into range after playback has already started.
- GUI Scale on PlayStation is now respected at title launch.
- Various inventory rendering glitches, toast notification duplicates, and touch/gamepad input quirks were resolved.
Why It Matters
This release is primarily a stability and consistency pass, not a feature drop. The Cushion and Chain rule changes in particular resolve a cluster of interconnected physics bugs that had frustrated builders since Drop 3 launched. Explorer Maps now actually being useful for exploration, rather than looping you back to the same area, is a small but meaningful gameplay improvement. The jukebox broadcast fix is great news for anyone running themed builds or music rooms on a shared server.
Java and Bedrock
This Beta & Preview release applies to Bedrock Edition only. Java Edition players receive equivalent Drop 3 content through separate snapshot releases on their own schedule. Several fixes in this build explicitly bring Bedrock behaviour in line with Java Edition, the Cushion colour default, the sit hint text, and Sapling flammability among them, so the two editions continue to converge.
For Server Owners
If you run a Bedrock-native or vanilla server, a handful of changes deserve your attention:
- Chain spawning rules: Mobs can now spawn in the space directly beneath a Chain. If you've used Chains as a subtle mob-proofing layer in any build, that trick no longer works, review your spawn-prevention setups.
- TNT explosion drop decay: Wool and Concrete Stairs/Slabs now obey the
tntExplosionDropDecaygame rule correctly. If your server uses custom explosion drop settings, the new behaviour may affect loot yields in PvP or survival areas. - Adventure mode protection: Cushions are now properly protected in Adventure mode, which is useful for map makers who want decorative items to be interaction-only.
- Add-on authors should note that the
minecraft:barterandminecraft:preferred_pathcomponent schemas are now stricter, invalid entity JSON will fail to load on version 1.26.50 and newer.
For Parents
No changes to content ratings, chat, or account systems in this build. The headline family-friendly improvements are practical ones: the game world no longer generates broken-looking villages (beds replaced by stone), Saplings grow more reliably, and audio from music blocks now works correctly whether your child joins a world mid-song or at the start. In short, the game simply behaves more predictably, which makes shared play sessions smoother and less frustrating for everyone at the table.
For Players
Here are the changes you'll notice most in your everyday game:
- Cushion decorating got better, you can now tuck a Cushion next to a Honey Block or inside a Chain without it getting weird. Cosy builds just got cosier.
- Stonecutter crafting for Concrete, all 16 colours of Concrete Stairs and Slabs are now available at the Stonecutter. No more crafting table math!
- Straw Beds break faster with a Hoe, grab the right tool and clearing out an old camp feels much snappier.
- Explorer Maps actually explore, the map from an Abandoned Camp will send you to a different biome, so treasure hunting has a real purpose again.
- Lava + cow = no free milk, that funny exploit is gone. Worth knowing before you try it!
Do SNT Kingdoms Need an Update?
No action needed, and SNT kingdoms are unaffected by this release. All SNT Gaming kingdoms run on Paper 1.21.11 / Fabric 1.21.4 backends behind a Velocity proxy, with Geyser + Floodgate handling Bedrock crossplay. Bedrock clients connecting through Geyser do so via the current stable Bedrock release, not Beta or Preview builds. More importantly, Mojang's new year-based versioning (26.x) is not yet supported by PaperMC, Velocity, or the Via platform, so Minecraft 26.x clients cannot connect to SNT kingdoms at this time, and no Beta/Preview build will change that until the broader ecosystem catches up. Your kingdom is stable, safe, and running smoothly on its current stack.