Minecraft 26.3 Snapshot 7 landed on August 4, 2026 as one of the final test builds before the full 26.3 game drop. It adds concrete stairs and slabs in all 16 colors, turns explorer maps into distinct items with their own icons, and hides brand-new explorer maps inside abandoned camps. Several map mechanics, loot tables, and data pack rules changed alongside those additions.
Quick answer: Load 26.3 Snapshot 7 in the Java launcher, then craft concrete stairs from 6 same-color concrete blocks and slabs from 3. Explore abandoned camps in eight biomes to find explorer maps that point to other camps and to structures like Ancient Cities and Woodland Mansions.
Concrete stairs and slabs for all 16 colors
Concrete now has full stair and slab variants for every dye color. Until this snapshot, colored builds were limited to full concrete blocks, which forced blocky edges on streets, stadiums, and furniture. The new pieces let you cut cleaner shapes while keeping your color palette intact.
Crafting works like other stone-type stairs and slabs. Stack 6 concrete blocks of one color in a stair pattern for 4 stairs, or place 3 in a horizontal row for slabs. Note that the stonecutter does not accept concrete, so the crafting table is the only way to make these pieces. Concrete powder has no stair or slab variant.
| Item | Recipe | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Concrete Stairs | 6 same-color concrete in a stair shape | 4 stairs |
| Concrete Slab | 3 same-color concrete in a row | 6 slabs |
Explorer maps hidden in abandoned camps
Abandoned camps now hold explorer maps as loot. Some of these maps point you to other abandoned camps, while others lead to major structures across the world. That gives camps a real reason to visit beyond their existing chest and barrel items.
Camp maps route you to other abandoned camps in the Bamboo Jungle, Cherry Grove, Birch Forest, Dappled Forest, Flower Forest, Pale Garden, Swamp, and Windswept Forest. A separate set of maps sends you toward the Ancient City, Trial Chambers, Mineshaft, Desert Pyramid, Jungle Pyramid, Warm Ocean Ruins, and Woodland Mansion.
Explorer maps are now their own items
Explorer maps used to be filled maps with a custom name. They are now separate items, each with its own icon, so you can tell them apart at a glance in your inventory or an item frame. The new set includes Ocean, Woodland, Trial, Jungle, and Swamp explorer maps, four village map variants, plus dedicated maps for the Ancient City, Mineshaft, Desert Pyramid, Buried Treasure, Warm Ocean Ruins, and abandoned campsites.
Existing explorer maps in old worlds convert to the matching new item when the world loads, so you do not lose anything. The plain Map and Empty Map also received new icons, and the map item entity now shows a small map graphic instead of a paper roll when dropped.
| Behavior | How it works now |
|---|---|
| Creative inventory | Explorer and campsite maps cannot be taken from the Creative inventory |
| Cloning | Explorer maps still clone in a crafting table, and copies keep their item type |
| Zooming out | Explorer maps and Buried Treasure Maps can no longer be zoomed out in a crafting table or cartography table |
| Player icon | The marker now always points in the direction you are facing |
Only maps in the #minecraft:extendable_maps tag can still be zoomed out with paper. Regular filled maps stay extendable, but explorer and buried treasure maps do not.
Abandoned camp loot and cushion changes
The barrel loot inside abandoned camps was updated, and the chest loot table now drops gunpowder in place of the firework rocket. These changes sit alongside the new explorer maps you can find at the same camps.
Cushions no longer block vibrations when placed, broken, or interacted with. A sculk sensor placed nearby will now detect a cushion being sat on, added, or removed, which was not the case before.
Realms regions and technical changes
Realms gained groundwork for additional server regions in Canada, Mexico, South Africa, and Arizona in the USA, should they become available in the future. The snapshot also raises the Data Pack version to 115.0 and the Resource Pack version to 95.0, and level.dat now stores a version_history list of prior data versions.
For data pack and command authors, several systems changed. Block state fields Name and Properties are now id and properties, and a block’s default state can be referenced by its block id directly.
| Area | Change |
|---|---|
| Data components | Added minecraft:attack_animation and minecraft:interact_animation; removed minecraft:swing_animation and minecraft:map_color |
/swing | No longer resets attack strength on a player; accepts whack or stab and an optional duration that defaults to 6t |
minecraft:exploration_map loot function | Removed the map_color field; now only adds map data to the existing item instead of changing its type |
| Density functions | Now evaluated with single-precision instead of double-precision, affecting all intermediate steps |
| New tags | #concrete_stairs, #concrete_slabs, #cloneable_maps, and #extendable_maps |
Data packs that produced exploration maps must now set their own item, changing minecraft:map to minecraft:filled_map or one of the explorer map items. If no matching structure is found, the item is left without a minecraft:map_id, so use minecraft:filtered with minecraft:discard_item to drop it, as the vanilla loot tables and villager trades now do.
Notable bug fixes
This build clears out several spear animation and cushion problems along with map generation and interface bugs. Interacting with a container while holding a spear no longer triggers the stabbing animation, and empty buried treasure maps no longer generate in shipwrecks and ocean ruins.
- Cushions could be used to see through blocks and could be placed inside full blocks when the player’s head intersected them (MC-309679, MC-309797).
- Overlapping cushions in the swamp and wooded badlands camp structures were fixed (MC-310553).
- Sniffers no longer stop sniffing after a relog (MC-302271).
- Zombies, husks, and drowned no longer hold out the wrong arm with spears (MC-304213).
- The macOS Command and Super keys are no longer shown as “Win” in the key binds screen (MC-121375, MC-189953).
To try everything, switch your Java launcher profile to 26.3-snapshot-7, which requires at least Java SE 25. Snapshots are test builds, so copy any world you care about before loading it, since save compatibility with the final 26.3 release is not guaranteed.
