Minecraft’s Fourth Dimension Arrives First in Another Game

Mojang is putting Minecraft’s first new dimension in over 14 years into Dungeons II on September 29, 2026, then into Java and Bedrock in 2027. The Sift joins the Overworld, the Nether, and the End. Vanilla players got a clip, a pink rabbit-like mob called the blub, and a year with no month on the calendar.

That order is the part that fits the studio’s old habit. For most of the 2010s, staff said a fourth dimension could wait until the Nether and the End had more to do. The Sift is the first time they have built the missing world in another game and asked the original to catch up later.

Minecraft’s Fourth Dimension Opens in a Spin-Off

Minecraft Dungeons II arrives on September 29, 2026 on Windows, Steam, Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2, and it is included with Game Pass on Xbox and PC. The dungeon crawler is where the Sift is playable first. Java and Bedrock, the editions that defined what a Minecraft dimension is, are dated only as 2027.

Sofia Dankis, writing the official recap of Minecraft Live on September 26, 2026, called the Sift beautiful, vibrant, and teeming with souls. In Dungeons II, rifts open across an interconnected Overworld. Walk into one and you leave the grass and dirt for a place of red and orange stone, green plants, ichor, and sculk.

Microsoft’s newsroom says the Sift was first shown at Gamescom, then given a longer look at the September show. Mojang is not saying how vanilla players will open it, or how the survival version will differ from the dungeon crawler. The advice from that post is blunt: if you want a look at the mobs, blocks, and biomes, play Dungeons II.

The September 26 broadcast is the vanilla clip. It is short, pink, and light on systems.

What Dungeons II Puts Behind the Rifts

Inside Dungeons II the dimension’s internal name was Wellspring, the title on an August 20, 2026 gameplay short before it was renamed. You can also force a way in through a Deep Dark portal with a Note Block Machine. The Grand Illusioner’s staff tears extra rifts. Illagers have already invaded, the story says, to take the Sift’s resources and souls.

THE SIFT’S NAMED GROUND IN DUNGEONS II

• Lullaby Hills: One of three listed locations on the Dungeons II map of the dimension.
• Singer’s Meadow: A green named area tied to Singers, soul blocks, and Echo Golems.
• The Carapace: A bone-heavy zone the Live show described as full of huge bone structures.
• The bosses: The Monarch, the Sculk Monstrosity, and the Harmonizer close out the dimension’s listed fights.

The official recap used shorter labels, the Meadow and the Carapace, and said other areas were being held back for launch. Microsoft’s post adds shifting tides within the Sift that can change your character and the people around you, plus hazardous new blocks that change how you move. Companions and threats are both new, and both unique to this place.

Laura de Llorens, design director on Dungeons II, told the Official Xbox Podcast the sequel’s brief was to make a new dimension rather than another Overworld dungeon. She wanted a slice of Minecraft that did not read as hell and did not read as a sanctuary.

We wanted part of the world of Minecraft that didn’t feel necessarily threatening or necessarily very benevolent. It’s just its own independent thing that you just have never encountered before.

Laura de Llorens, Design Director, Official Xbox Podcast

She also said mobs there thrive on things that hurt the player, because they live there and are adapted to it. That is a different job from the Nether’s lava roof or the End’s void. It is also a lot of fiction to park in a spin-off for a year while survival gets a screenshot.

Staff Spent Years Saying Not Yet

The Minecraft Wiki’s history of the Sift is mostly a record of people on the Minecraft team talking themselves out of a fourth world. Nathan Adams, then a developer known as Dinnerbone, said on July 10, 2012 that there were no plans for a new dimension until the Nether and the End had more content, and he said it again on October 19, 2012. On April 17, 2014 he said new dimensions would be fun to add, but not any time soon.

On September 29, 2018, a panel that included Adams, Cory Scheviak, Jason Major, Anita Surajit, and Adrian Östergård still said they were unhappy with how deep the current dimensions were and would rather expand those than start a fourth. On November 22, 2022, Brandon Pearce said a new dimension would have to play differently from the ones already in the game, and that extra worlds were a way to spread new scenery so a single dimension did not get overcrowded.

HOW THE FOURTH WORLD WAS DELAYED, THEN SPLIT

1. October 30, 2010: The Nether ships in Java Alpha 1.2.0, the Halloween Update.
2. November 18, 2011: The End ships in Java 1.0.0 with the Ender Dragon.
3. July 10, 2012: Dinnerbone says a new dimension waits until the Nether and the End get more depth.
4. June 23, 2020: The Nether Update finally adds crimson and warped forests, soul sand valleys, basalt deltas, piglins, and netherite.
5. August 19, 2026: Jens Bergensten, Mojang’s chief creative officer, is asked why the Sift is going into Dungeons II instead of Minecraft; the Wiki’s record of the reply is that each dimension needs a functional reason to exist.
6. September 26, 2026: Minecraft Live says the Sift will be vanilla’s fourth dimension in 2027, after a clip of pink ground and a blub.
7. September 29, 2026: Dungeons II launches with the Sift as a full, named set of maps.

On the Live stage the studio said it had been over a decade since Minecraft gained a dimension, and that it mattered for all the teams to help decide what the new one would be. That is the cleanest public admission that Dungeons II was not a side door. It was the design room.

Pink Sculk, White Trees, and a Walking Rabbit

The vanilla clip is the only survival footage Mojang posted, and it is worth describing because so little else is on the record. The ground is pink and green in a sculk-like pattern. Grass sits in salmon and baby-pink shades. Thick trees with dark gray trunks and white canopies show up in the distance, with hanging foliage under the leaves. The named creature is the blub, a small passive rabbit-like mob that squeaks. In the footage it walks. It does not hop.

That last detail is why the stills spread so fast. The Nether is fire and roof-bedrock. The End is black sky and chorus. The Sift reads as a place you could plant a bed, even though beds only set spawn in the Overworld and Mojang has not said whether that rule will move. People looking at the stills wanted to live there. A smaller group said a fourth dimension that cute cannot stand next to ghasts and the dragon.

De Llorens already answered that complaint in the other direction. The Sift, in her telling, is not supposed to be a third hell. Mobs can still be nasty. The place itself is meant to feel independent. Vanilla has not shown a hostile Sift mob yet. The blub is the one that got a name.

Community names for the new blocks are already piling up around the clip, pink healthy sculk and white tree leaves among them. Only the blub is official for Java and Bedrock. The rest is what a still looks like when you pause it.

Nine Years and Seven Months in the Nether

The last time Minecraft added a dimension, the world was thin on purpose. The Nether of 2010 was lava, netherrack, ghasts, and a ceiling. It stayed that way until June 23, 2020, nine years and seven months after it shipped, when the Nether Update turned it into a set of biomes with a gear tier above diamond. The End, added on November 18, 2011, still plays like a boss arena with outer islands bolted on: chorus fruit, shulkers, elytra, and the dragon. There has been no End-shaped version of that 2020 overhaul.

MINECRAFT’S FOUR DIMENSIONS

The old rule, the one Dinnerbone kept repeating, was that a new portal waits until those rows have enough in them. The Nether row got filled in 2020. The End row did not. The Sift row is being filled in a paid action RPG, then copied across later. That is the reverse of 2010 and 2011, when Mojang shipped a dangerous shell and spent years stuffing it.

A datapack trying to move the Dungeons II Sift into vanilla worlds was already circulating on September 24, 2026, two days before Live confirmed the 2027 date. The people who build extra dimensions for fun did not need a keynote. They needed maps, blocks, and a name.

When Java and Bedrock Get the Sift

Mojang’s recap says the Sift is coming to Java and Bedrock Edition next year, the first new dimension in over 14 years, joining the Overworld, the Nether, and the End. During the show, Agnes Larsson, Minecraft’s game director, tied it to a longer “aspirational adventures” plan. The Sift is one step on that path, she said, and not the end of it. No snapshot, no preview build, and no portal recipe have been posted for survival.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The window: Java and Bedrock get the Sift in 2027, with no month attached.
• The named mob: The blub is the only vanilla creature officially named from the clip.
• The footage: Pink and green sculk-like ground, thick white trees, and a walking rabbit-like animal.
• The near-term drop: Ice caves, calcite, icicles, ice crystals, and an unnamed frozen zombie are heading into testing first.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The door: No vanilla portal block, item, or Deep Dark link has been announced.
• The boss: No survival equivalent of the Monarch, Harmonizer, or Sculk Monstrosity has been shown.
• The maps: There is no confirmation that Lullaby Hills, Singer’s Meadow, or the Carapace generate in survival seeds.
• The tides: Microsoft described shifting tides as a Dungeons II rule; vanilla has not claimed them.

Minecraft on Nintendo Switch 2 is dated October 27, 2026, which is still this year and still not a Sift date. The next survival scenery Mojang actually walked through on stage was ice caves, a frozen underground biome in line with dripstone, lush, and sulfur caves. The frozen zombie hits with a freezing effect and some of them throw ice balls. That drop will reach players while the fourth dimension is still a spin-off map.

Players Wanted an End Update First

Under the first widely shared still of the Sift, the joke that stuck was not “2027 is too far.” It was “anything but an End update.” That is the same objection staff voiced in 2012, 2014, and 2018, and it is still live because the End never got its Nether Update. The Sift does not fix that. It adds a fourth row to the table while the third row is still a dragon fight and some islands.

The friendlier read of the same stills is the one de Llorens wanted: a dimension that is not a punishment. After 14 years of lava and void, Mojang is testing a world that looks inhabited, even kind, and it is testing that idea on Dungeons II buyers before it writes the survival rules. If the dungeon crawler’s Meadows and bone fields work, vanilla inherits a place that already has a reason to exist. If they do not, 2027 is a long time to sit with a pink rabbit and no portal.

Minecraft Dungeons II launches on September 29, 2026. Ice caves are the next vanilla drop in testing. The Sift, in Java and Bedrock, is still only a year on a slide.