Minecraft continues to grow with regular content drops that keep the game fresh and exciting. While snapshots have been giving us peeks at new features since early January, players are eager to know when these changes will officially arrive in their worlds. The next update looks particularly interesting with its focus on bringing more life to familiar biomes and adding variety to some of Minecraft’s oldest mobs. If you’re wondering what’s coming and when you can play it, here’s everything we know so far.
When Is the Next Minecraft Update Coming Out?
The next Minecraft update (version 1.21.60) should arrive between late February and early March 2025. While Mojang hasn’t given us an exact date, we can make a good guess based on their usual pattern of releasing updates about a month after features appear in snapshots. The first preview of new features came out on January 8, 2025, and they’ve been adding more content through snapshots since then.
What’s New in This Update?
New Animal Variants
The biggest change you’ll notice is how your farm animals look. Pigs, cows, and chickens are getting new variants based on where they live:
- Pigs:
- Warm pigs with rusty brown skin, found in Savannas, Jungles, and Badlands.
- Cold pigs with fluffy beige fur, found in Taiga and Windswept Hills.
- Original pink pigs (now called Temperate pigs) remain in Plains, Forests, and Swamps.
- Cows:
- Warm cows with dark reddish-brown color and upward-facing horns, found in Savannas, Jungles, and Badlands.
- Cold cows with light brown thick fur and forward-facing horns, found in Taiga and Windswept Hills.
- Original cows (now called Temperate cows) stay in Plains, Forests, and Swamps.
- Chickens:
- Warm chickens with toasty brown feathers that lay brown eggs.
- Cold chickens with bluish-grey fluffy feathers that lay blue eggs.
- Original white chickens (now Temperate) that lay white eggs.
An interesting detail about these new variants is that when you breed two different types, their baby will randomly take after either parent.
World Improvements
The desert biomes are getting significant updates with this release. New cactus flowers now have a chance to grow on top of cacti – 10% chance for 1-2 block tall cacti and 25% chance for taller ones. These flowers can be used for pink dye and can feed bees. The desert also features new dry grass variants, both short and tall, which can be grown with bone meal and help sheep regrow their wool faster.
The update brings several features that make the whole Minecraft world more dynamic. You’ll find wildflowers spreading naturally through birch forests and meadows, similar to cherry petals. These can be used to make yellow dye and help grow trees with beehives. When walking through forests, Dark Forests, and Wooded Badlands, you’ll notice leaf litter on the ground that can be created by smelting leaves and used as fuel. Trees now have falling leaves animations in all biomes, not just Cherry Groves and Pale Gardens.
Firefly bushes are being added to river banks and swamps, glowing at night with light particles visible from far away. The update also introduces new ambient sounds, including a special background sound for desert biomes and metallic sounds for iron blocks, trapdoors, doors, and buttons.
Minecraft Updates
The next Minecraft update focuses on making the world more detailed and alive, from new animal variants to environmental features. While we don’t have an exact release date, you can expect these changes in a few weeks or a month at most. In the meantime, you can try many of these features in the Java Snapshots or Bedrock Preview versions of the game.
