Guidefor players3 min read
What Minecraft snapshot names mean
26.4-snapshot-1, 26.3-pre-1, 26.3-rc-1 and the old 25w46a. What each Minecraft test build name tells you, and how far along a release actually is.
Five names, five meanings
Mojang uses a different name for each stage of a release, and each one tells you how finished the build is.
| Looks like | Stage | How finished |
|---|---|---|
26.4-snapshot-1 | snapshot | Early. Features still arriving |
26.3-pre-1 | pre-release | Feature complete, being fixed |
26.3-rc-1 | release candidate | Would ship as it is if nothing turns up |
26.3 | release | Done |
25w46a | old style snapshot | Used up to November 2025 |
The first four arrive in that order and never go backwards. Minecraft 26.3 is a good example of a full cycle: ten snapshots from 23 June, three pre-releases from 1 September, three release candidates from 10 September, and the release on 15 September 2026.
Snapshots: 26.4-snapshot-1
26.4-snapshot-1 is the first snapshot aimed at 26.4. The name tells you the target and how
many snapshots came before it. Mojang switched to this style with 26.1-snapshot-1 on
16 December 2025, when the calendar version numbers arrived.
Snapshots are where new features show up first, and where they change most between builds. A feature in snapshot 1 can look very different by the release, or be pulled from it.
The old style: 25w46a
Before the switch, snapshots were named after the date:
- 25: the year, 2025
- w: week
- 46: week 46 of that year
- a: the first snapshot published that week
A second one in the same week would have been 25w46b. 25w46a, published on
11 November 2025, was the last regular snapshot named this way.
The catch with this style was that it never told you which release a snapshot was heading for. That is the problem the new names fix. You will still see week style names on every version from before 2026, so they are worth being able to read.
One 2026 version breaks the pattern: 26w14a, published on 1 April 2026. It was that year's
April Fools joke version, not a test build for a real release. See
every April Fools version.
Pre-releases: 26.3-pre-1
A pre-release means the features are in. From here the work is fixing bugs, not adding things.
The number counts up as problems are found and fixed: pre-1, pre-2, pre-3. A long
pre-release run usually means something significant turned up. Note the dash: calendar
releases write 26.3-pre-1, while the 1.x releases wrote 1.21.11-pre1.
For a server operator this is the point where testing your plugins becomes worthwhile. Before a pre-release the API can still move; after it, mostly it does not.
Release candidates: 26.3-rc-1
A release candidate is the build Mojang intends to ship. If nothing serious is found, the exact same code becomes the release under a different name.
rc-2 means something serious was found in rc-1.
This is the last stop before the version people will actually run, and it is the right moment to confirm your setup works, because the answer will still be true next week.
Then the release
26.3, with no suffix. Everything after that is a hotfix, such as 26.1.1 and 26.1.2:
bug fixes and nothing else.
Running a snapshot safely
Two rules, and the first one is not negotiable:
Copy your world first. Opening a world on a snapshot converts it, and conversion is one way. There is no downgrade. See can you downgrade a world for what that costs when people find out afterwards.
Use a separate installation. In the official launcher, create a new installation for the snapshot rather than switching your existing one. Then your normal setup is untouched and you can go back by launching it.
Also worth knowing:
- Snapshot clients cannot join release servers. Snapshot protocol numbers use a separate range that can never match a release protocol.
- Almost no mods and plugins support snapshots. Loaders sometimes ship snapshot builds; the ecosystem around them mostly does not.
- Things break, and that is the point. A snapshot is published so bugs are found before the release. Report what you find.
For what the current 26.4 snapshots change on a server, see the 26.4 snapshots for server owners.
Where a snapshot sits in the timeline
The names are not sortable. 25w46a, 26.3-pre-1 and 26.4-snapshot-1 follow no common
pattern, and no parsing rule orders them correctly.
The order Mojang publishes in its own version manifest is chronological and covers every naming scheme in one list, which is the ordering this site uses everywhere. Each version page shows what came immediately before and after it, so a snapshot's real position is a click rather than a guess. Which version is newer has the detail if you need to sort them in your own code.
