Minecraft Update: Minecraft 26.3 Pre-Release 1

Mojang dropped 26.3 Pre-Release 1 on September 1st, and it's exactly what the name promises: the last stretch before a stable release. No new features, no surprise mobs. Just bug fixes, a handful of technical adjustments, and one pretty significant overhaul to how datapacks handle numbers under the hood.

If you've been following the 26.3 snapshots, this is the version where things settle down. Pre-releases exist so the community can stress-test everything before it ships to millions of players, so now's the time to actually report problems instead of just complaining about them on Reddit.

The number provider split: boring name, real consequences

The headline technical change here is that Mojang split the old minecraft:number_provider system into two separate registries: minecraft:context_int_provider for integer math and minecraft:context_float_provider for floats. On paper that sounds like internal plumbing nobody asked for. In practice it's a breaking change for anyone running custom datapacks.

Here's why it exists. Mixing float and integer operations in the old system could quietly lose precision or produce weird rounding errors. Splitting them forces each calculation to stay in one lane, so a loot table rolling integer counts can't accidentally get mangled by a float operation sneaking in somewhere.

"Number provider types and values have been split into two separate registries... to avoid accidental loss of precision and range due to mixing of float and integer operations."

A bunch of familiar names got renamed in the process too. minecraft:sum is now minecraft:add, minecraft:product is now minecraft:mul, minecraft:minimum/maximum became min/max. New functions like pow, sqrt, sin, cos, and floor_div showed up too, which actually opens the door to way more complex math inside loot tables and functions than before.

The catch: if a server runs technical datapacks for custom loot, villager trades, or cooking recipes, those datapacks probably need updates before 26.3 goes stable. Villager trade files now require explicit int or float providers for fields like max_uses, xp, and reputation_discount. Cooking recipes also lost their optional cookingtime field, it's mandatory now, and custom blast furnace or smoker recipes need their times doubled to match the new default.

A furnace bug that was quietly duplicating smelted items

Buried in the fixed bugs list is MC-311183, which sounds minor until you read it closely: fuel in blast furnaces and smokers was smelting double the items it should've. That's not a cosmetic glitch, that's a resource generation bug on any server with active smelting setups, farms, or auto-smelters. If a server's economy leans on smelting output, this fix is worth testing before launch day rather than finding out the hard way afterward.

Right next to it is MC-311414, a fix for players teleporting arbitrary distances using a desynced carrot on a stick on a pig. Anytime "arbitrary distances" shows up in a bug title, that's a red flag for griefing or map exploitation. Good riddance to that one.

A few other fixes touch combat directly. Shield users were getting locked out of sweep attacks for a moment right after blocking (MC-310957), which matters a lot more in PvP-focused servers than it sounds. Endermen were also able to teleport onto waterlogged blocks (MC-311372), and arrows now properly bounce off them even mid-teleport (MC-311400).

Mac users finally get their fullscreen back

This one's been a sore spot for a while. Exclusive Fullscreen returns on macOS, and there's a new "Menu/Dock Visibility" toggle in Video Settings that controls whether the menu bar and dock pop up when the cursor hits the edge of the screen. The cursor is also now properly confined to the window while in Exclusive Fullscreen.

Not a flashy change, but if a chunk of a server's player base runs on Mac, this is the kind of quality-of-life fix that stops people from switching to Borderless just to avoid annoying UI quirks.

Smaller fixes worth knowing about

• Dropping a hotbar item while switching slots at the same time used to desync the item, which is now fixed (MC-154881). That bug's been around a long time.
• Ender pearls landing incorrectly at high speeds got patched (MC-277906), good news for anyone building pearl-based minigames or elytra setups.
• Dappled forests were playing the wrong music track, using the flower forest theme instead of the regular forest one (MC-311129). Small, but noticeable if ambiance is part of a server's appeal.
• Locking difficulty on the World Options screen now actually disables the difficulty button right away instead of needing a restart (MC-311546).
• Game crashes on Wayland with OpenGL are fixed (MC-310331), which matters if any of the server's Linux players have been stuck on Vulkan as a workaround.

There's also a new item tag, #furnace_fuel_bottom_takeable, which controls what a hopper attached to a furnace's bottom face can pull out. Niche, but it's the kind of thing automation-heavy tech servers will want to check against existing farm designs.

What this means heading into release

None of this is thrilling on the surface. There's no new mob, no new biome, nothing you'd put in a trailer. But pre-releases rarely are exciting, that's the point. The real story here is Mojang continuing to refactor the datapack system into something more consistent and less error-prone, even if it means breaking compatibility for technical creators in the short term.

For most players, 26.3 will land and feel basically the same as the last few snapshots, just more stable. For server owners running custom content, the number provider split is homework. Test datapacks now, while it's still a pre-release and feedback actually gets read, rather than after the stable drop when it's too late to flag anything.

The full technical breakdown and bug list is worth a look if a server runs heavy datapacks or custom recipes, you can find it on the official Minecraft.net post.