Minecraft Beta & Preview 26.70.22: Snow Bricks, Cold Sulfur Cubes & More
What Changed
Beta & Preview 26.70.22 is the latest work-in-progress build for both Bedrock editions, pushing forward what Mojang is calling Drop 4 of 2026. The headline additions are a brand-new decorative block family and a fresh mob variant, but there are also meaningful fixes across gameplay, graphics, accessibility, and the Marketplace.
Snow Bricks, a new decorative family
- Snow Bricks join the game as a full set: base block, slab, stair, and wall.
- They are purely decorative, do not melt in warm biomes, and are best broken with a shovel.
- Think of them like Stone Bricks or Mud Bricks, clean, themeable, and great for winter builds.
Cold Sulfur Cubes, freeze the world around you
- Equip a Sulfur Cube with a Blue Ice block to create the new Cold archetype.
- Cold Sulfur Cubes convert any water source block they cross into Frosted Ice, similar to the Frost Walker enchantment effect.
- Otherwise they behave like the Fast Sliding archetype, so they are still quick and slippery to work with.
Packed Ice Bricks polish
- Blocks are now correctly placed in the Creative inventory alongside their Sulfur counterparts.
- Note Blocks played on top of Packed Ice Bricks now produce the Chime sound.
- Slabs and Stairs now submerge properly in lava and water.
- All naming follows a consistent pattern matching other brick sets.
- Ambient sounds play when a player stands on Packed Ice.
Wandering Traders & mob behaviour
- Wandering Traders now sell one Ice Crystal for two Emeralds.
- Husks and Drowned now correctly convert into Zombies before turning into Frostbites when submerged in Powder Snow, the conversion chain now matches intended design.
- Zombies, Husks, and Drowned no longer take freezing damage in Powder Snow.
- Villagers and Zombie Villagers spawn as their snowy variants inside Ice Caves.
- Frogs and adult Turtles in deep water now reliably swim to the surface and climb onto nearby land.
Notable bug fixes
- Ender Pearl teleportation now matches Java behaviour, you land where the pearl was on the tick before impact.
- Teleporting into the side of a block no longer incorrectly triggers ground-standing effects.
- Block cracking textures on Icicles, Ice Crystals, and Straw Beds are no longer darker than intended.
- Split-screen animations no longer play too fast, and ray-tracing campfire rendering errors are resolved.
- Physical keyboard users on Android can now Tab-autocomplete commands in chat correctly.
- Fourteen miscellaneous items received new accessibility tooltips; Smithing Templates, workstations, tools, and enchantments got tooltip updates too.
- Duplicate music disc playback when a split-screen player joins has been fixed.
- Number keys can now move hotbar items directly into Furnace, Blast Furnace, or Smoker slots.
Why It Matters
Drop 4 is shaping up to be a genuine winter-themed content wave. Snow Bricks give builders a long-requested snowy equivalent to other brick families, and the Cold Sulfur Cube opens up creative mob interactions that blur the line between building tool and living creature. The Powder Snow mob-conversion fixes also tighten up a mechanic that had been quietly behaving oddly since Frostbites were introduced.
Java and Bedrock
This build is Bedrock-only, it applies to Preview on Xbox, PlayStation, Windows, and iOS, and to Beta on Android. There is no Java Edition equivalent for this specific build. The Ender Pearl fix is particularly interesting because it brings Bedrock behaviour closer in line with Java, which is a step toward better crossplay consistency. Java players on stable releases are unaffected by this preview.
For Server Owners
If you run a Bedrock-compatible server with a Geyser/Floodgate bridge (as SNT kingdoms do), keep an eye on how Cold Sulfur Cubes interact with water in your worlds, any mob that freely converts water source blocks into ice could reshape terrain in survival environments if Sulfur Cubes roam unchecked. The improved minecraft:behavior.move_to_land AI goal also means Frog and Turtle pathfinding is more reliable, which may reduce the classic complaint of mobs stubbornly swimming against walls. No server-side action is needed for this preview, but it's worth flagging these mechanics to your players ahead of the stable release.
For Parents
This is a beta / preview build, meaning it is a work in progress and is not the version your child plays on a standard installation. Betas can be unstable, so Mojang recommends keeping separate save files if your child opts in. The changes themselves are creative and safe, new decorative blocks, a cool ice-freezing mob variant, and lots of quality-of-life fixes. The accessibility tooltip additions are a particularly welcome touch for younger players still learning what items do.
For Players
Winter building just got a serious upgrade! Snow Bricks let you construct castles, forts, and cosy cabins with that perfect snowy stone look, and they won't melt, so your masterpiece is safe even near torches. The Cold Sulfur Cube is genuinely exciting: imagine guiding one across a lake and watching it freeze solid beneath you. You can find Ice Crystals more easily now too, since Wandering Traders stock them for just two Emeralds each. Grab the Preview or Beta app to try all of this before it hits the full release!
Do SNT Kingdoms Need an Update?
No action required, and SNT kingdoms are not affected by this build at all. Our kingdoms run on Paper 1.21.11 / Fabric 1.21.4 backends behind a Velocity proxy, with Geyser + Floodgate handling Bedrock crossplay. Bedrock clients on the stable release connect just fine through Geyser today. However, Minecraft 26.x clients (the year-based versioning scheme that this preview belongs to) are not yet supported, PaperMC, Velocity, and the Via suite have not migrated to Mojang's new year-based version format, so players running the Preview or Beta build will not be able to connect to SNT kingdoms until that ecosystem support lands. We are watching the upstream projects closely and will update kingdoms as soon as a stable, supported path exists. Stick to the standard Minecraft release and all six of your worlds, Survival, SharedLife, RandomLoot, Chaos, Spleef, and Rivals, remain fully playable.