Minecraft Adds The Sift, Its First New Dimension Since The End, to Java and Bedrock in 2027

By CriticalPixel · 2026-09-26

Mojang used the end of Minecraft Live on September 26 to confirm something the game has not done since 2011: Minecraft is getting a fourth dimension. It is called The Sift, it debuts in Minecraft Dungeons II when that game launches on September 29, and it arrives in Minecraft Java and Bedrock in 2027. GameSpot framed it as the first new dimension in more than a decade and a half, while Mojang's own recap says over 14 years, and either way the last addition was The End, home of the Ender Dragon. That is a long stretch of Overworld, Nether and End, and plenty of players have been asking for something new to walk through a portal into. The catch is that the full version starts life as a spin-off exclusive, and the main game only got a glimpse of it on the broadcast.

Glowing blue portal surrounded by icy turquoise vegetation in the colorful canyon landscape of The Sift dimension

What Mojang actually announced

The official Minecraft Live recap from Mojang's Sofia Dankis states it plainly: The Sift is joining the Overworld, the Nether and the End as the fourth dimension, and it is coming to Java and Bedrock next year. During the broadcast viewers got a look at the dimension in Minecraft proper and even one of the mobs that lives there. Nobody has said yet how many of the creatures from Dungeons II will follow it into the main game. GameSpot lists Sifters, Singers, Neesters and Sprouts among the new mobs in Dungeons II, and none of those are confirmed for vanilla Minecraft. Mojang also named two areas inside the dimension, the Meadow and the Carapace, which tells you the Dungeons team built this as a proper region and not a single biome.

What The Sift is actually like

The pitch is that this is not another hellscape. Minecraft Dungeons II director Mans Olson told GameSpot the team wanted a place that feels different from what already exists, saying "we already have two dimensions that clearly scream, 'I'm evil!'" He described it as something closer to a different Overworld, a place you could picture yourself living in, sometimes peaceful, sometimes serene, though still dangerous. Visually it is red and orange stone, green vegetation, sculk-like elements and pools of a hazardous liquid called icor. In Dungeons II you reach it through rifts that open across the Overworld, and GameSpot reads the Ancient City portals as the more likely entrance for the main game, which is a guess and not a confirmation. That is a smart direction on paper, because a third hostile dimension would have been a very lazy way to spend fourteen years of waiting.

The origin story matters too. The Sift exists because Dungeons II needed a new dimension for its story, and the Dungeons team worked alongside the vanilla Minecraft team the whole way. Olson said that whenever they build something new they ask whether it could be reused in the base game, and he was careful to add that it does not mean it will or has to. Mojang had already decided it would, and the recap says so outright. Still, it is worth noticing that the biggest change to Minecraft's world structure in over a decade was born inside a side game and only later promoted to the flagship.

Dark Minecraft ice cave with hanging icicles and frozen terrain from the upcoming winter game drop

The rest of the Minecraft Live pile

Minecraft Live was not just The Sift. The winter game drop got its first look, and it is a frozen one: ice caves as a new cave biome, icicles growing from ceilings, ice crystals that grow from the floor and give off a soft glow, and a new frozen zombie variant that applies a freezing effect and sometimes throws ice balls. The zombie does not have a name yet. Minecraft World opens in London at Chessington World of Adventures Resort in 2027 with a themed hotel and a rollercoaster called Escape the Nether. The recap also mentions Minecraft arriving on Nintendo Switch 2 on October 27, Minecraft Education turning 10, a push for a creator platform, and sound effect packs headed for the Marketplace. Dungeons II itself lists PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, Switch and Switch 2 on GameSpot's game page.

Two Minecraft characters camping beneath colorful autumn trees with snowy mountains in the distance

How the community is taking it

The XBOX account pushed an Official XBOX Podcast episode with the Dungeons II team about The Sift, new mechanics and better exploration, and the replies I scrolled were upbeat. People were joking about better loot, asking for the Dungeons II boss called The Monarch to come to vanilla with the dimension, and treating the news as a good Saturday. That is a small sample of a few fans, so I will not call it a consensus. The one real question that kept surfacing is the obvious one: how do you get in from the main game, and which mobs come with you? Mojang has not answered either yet, and no complaints about the dimension itself showed up in what I read.

The CriticalPixel take

Credit where it is due: a calmer, greener dimension is the right call, and Olson's line about two dimensions that scream evil is the best design pitch in the whole announcement. What I do not love is the order of operations. Players who want The Sift in their survival worlds get told to wait until 2027, and the first taste sits inside a Dungeons II release that Mojang and Xbox are clearly happy to use as the marketing engine. That is not a scandal, but it is a very convenient way to sell a sequel with the one thing the base game community has wanted for years. The vague answers on mobs and portals also leave a lot of room for the vanilla version to be a trimmed-down cousin of the Dungeons one.

The real test comes on September 29, when Dungeons II lets people actually walk through the rifts, and then in the snapshots that should follow ahead of the 2027 release. If the Meadow and the Carapace survive the trip into Java and Bedrock with their mobs, their loot and a sensible way to enter, this will be the most interesting thing Mojang has added in years. If it arrives as a reskinned Overworld with a portal tacked on, that fourteen year wait is going to look long. Either way, the ice caves come first, and that gives us a reason to open the game this winter while the big dimension cooks.