The launcher installs and updates the game — no need to grab these archives by hand. You need your own Minecraft: Java Edition.
Binaries removed (licence cleanup, see #6741); tags and source remain.
New
- port-pack: blocks whose sides are true/false are vines, not walls (Chipped's vines load) (#1027)
- Far terrain: chunk summaries and mesh inputs on the worker (#1029)
- Launcher and horizon-server update: install only releases whose signed checksums match (#1014)
- Collision scans: a counting cursor, and fewer lookups and allocations per block (#659)
- Structures: Repurposed Structures' waterlogging fix, as horizon:waterlog_in_world_water (#1032)
- Content mods: shared tags merge like a data pack's, replace honoured with a warning (#1021)
- Stars: build the star buffer once, as vanilla does (#1079, fixes #1054)
- Video settings: cost tags from measured frame times, and Saves time for cave culling (#1089, fixes #897)
- Weather: rain heights from a cached MOTION_BLOCKING heightmap (#1084, fixes #899)
- Cave culling: vanilla's graph rules (every entry face, distant ray test) (#1094, fixes #629, fixes #782)
- Items merge with their neighbours; falling blocks land in their own tick (#1110, fixes #996)
- Loading screen: fill the chunk map square by square, as vanilla (#1112, fixes #770)
- Cave culling: see the world from above or below its height (#1111, fixes #1037)
- Sky, fog and water fog colours blend across biomes (GaussianSampler) (#1118, fixes #797)
- Terrain particles: the model's particle sprite and vanilla tint (grass blocks break into dirt) (#1115, fixes #1034)
- Extras: classic buttons two to a row; each extra's settings nest under its switch (#1122, fixes #812, fixes #815)
- Book title: Select All's highlight and vanilla's centring (BookSignScreen EditBox) (#1123)
- Station shift-clicks follow vanilla's quickMoveStack; the brewing stand runs on the menu engine (#1125, fixes #275)
- End crystals spin and bob in every dimension (#1116, fixes #1051)
- Boats: the water patch hides water inside the hull; the riding camera turns smoothly (#1119, fixes #1016)
- Ender dragon: runs on server levels, fights every player, vanilla damage rules (#1137)
- Other players' block cracks are drawn (#1149, fixes #1096)
- Loot tables apply set_potion (a piglin's barter potions hold fire resistance) (#1134)
- Other players are drawn lying in their beds (#1144, fixes #1045)
- A new world knows its world spawn before its first save (#1135)
- /summon reports primed TNT, falling blocks and projectiles it spawned (#1136)
- Ominous item spawners are saved with their chunk (#1143, fixes #462)
- Locator bar: one waypoint manager per level (#1150, fixes #843)
- Advancement triggers test only the criteria that can pass; the log writes on its own thread (#1152)
- Thrown potions: drawn as their item, facing the camera (ThrownItemRenderer) (#1117, fixes #818)
- Audio: pan like OpenAL Soft's stereo output (explosions were ~6 dB too loud) (#1133, fixes #488)
- Particles: 26.3's sulfur bubbles over wet potent sulfur (closes the #63 particle audit) (#1156, fixes #63)
- Axolotl: free water paths, flat walk targets and the attack sound (idle swim and play dead match vanilla) (#1159, fixes #64)
- LAN fixes: land the eight rebased B5 PRs together (#1138 #1139 #1140 #1142 #1146 #1147 #1148 #1151) (#1160)
- Client of a server: abilities from the server, flight sent back (creative flight on the server thread) (#1108)
- Run single player on its server thread by default (#1114, fixes #1072)
- Shader packs: Steadfast, Bloop and Noble get past the preprocessor; a compatibility table (#1157, fixes #616)
- Shader Packs page: the folder's path, Open Folder, a switch per pack (#1158, fixes #925, fixes #941)
- Dynamic lights: held, dropped and burning light sources (Horizon Extras, off by default) (#1162, fixes #814)
- Riptide: the auto-spin attack (pose, contact hit, spinning model, effect layer, first-person pose) (#1155, fixes #536)
- Render thread ahead of the workers on macOS and Windows (RD 32 long frames) (#1179)
- Chunk packets get 1 ms a frame on a client of a server (RD 32 frame spikes) (#1181)
- Live player count: an anonymous "I'm playing" ping and "N playing now" in the launcher (#1185)
- LAN guests: the lectern and the cartography table (#868) (#1188, fixes #868)
- Linux: the game's workers go behind its render and server threads (RD 32 long frames) (#1192)
Fixed
- fix: reset spectator fly speed when changing game modes (#1039)
- Fix creative and spectator hunger exhaustion and starvation (#1036, fixes #1033)
- fix: prevent spectators from dropping hotbar items (#1059, fixes #1053)
- Fix section headings in classic video settings search (#1064, fixes #894)
- Fix creative barrier block markers (#1062, fixes #1057)
- Prepare startup handoff CPU resources off the UI thread (#1042)
- Mods: capability storage, a quota'd per-mod key/value folder (#1044, fixes #1040)
- Restore missing accessibility settings (#1061, fixes #1058)
- Centre the cursor when a screen opens from gameplay (#235)
- fix(gfx): Stop the swapchain washing colours out (#1075)
- Structures: Repurposed Structures' air fix as horizon:close_off_air_sources (#1020)
- fix(hud): Apply legacy formatting codes to action bar and titles (#1077)
- Keep the loading UI responsive during local world initialization (#1041)
- Keep world saves and exit responsive while preserving durability (#1043)
- Shears carve pumpkins (PumpkinBlock.useItemOn) (#1081, fixes #1067)
- Blocks can't be placed into mobs and other entities (Level.isUnobstructed) (#1085, fixes #1052)
- Cobwebs slow falling blocks (WebBlock.entityInside) (#1082, fixes #933)
- Firework tooltips: flight duration and explosions (Fireworks.addToTooltip) (#1083, fixes #1047)
- Creative pick block in inventories: full stacks and drags (AbstractContainerScreen cloning) (#1086, fixes #1048)
- Title backdrop: build its generator on a worker (#1087, fixes #896)
- Prepare: accept Mojang's republished 26.3 asset indexes (no sound, no panorama) (#1091)
- Prepare: import the Unifont glyphs from the asset index (#1092, fixes #1076)
- /tick on a server thread: sprint, query, step and a smooth frozen camera (#1088, fixes #1038)
- Prepare finds installed JDKs; the launcher shows the preparation error up top (#1093, fixes #666)
- Elytra: a glide that isn't diving keeps the fall distance at 1 (no landing damage) (#1103, fixes #1046)
- Combat: attribute swapping (attack damage and speed from last tick's main hand) (#1105, fixes #505)
- No block placing or item use while an item is in use (shield, bow, food) (#1102, fixes #1050)
- Elytra: a landing glide lasts one more tick, so elytra hops keep their speed (#1104, fixes #1056)
- Combat: sprint knockback and knockback along the attacker's yaw; vanilla knockback on players (#1106, fixes #504)
- Explosions: two Blast Protection pieces cancel the knockback (explosion_knockback_resistance, per-slot enchantment modifiers) (#1101, fixes #1049)
- Beehives: nests on trees grown in the world get their bees (#1107, fixes #1097)
- fix(benchmark): create the world folder before writing its marker (#1120)
- horizon-server update: version 0.2 counts as newer than the dated releases (#1127)
- Draw and collide blocks while a piston moves them (#1113, fixes #935)
- A release says its version: horizon-server, horizon-prepare, crash reports and user agents report 0.2.x (#1131)
- Mob tick: build the mob world once a tick and answer mob queries from grids (#1200, fixes #1218)
- Server tick: cheaper view requeue, chunk ticket levels and player-proximity grid (#1201, fixes #1219)
- Mob tick: drop repeated scans in guest bindings, villagers, allays, piglins and sculk (#1202)
- Hoppers: skip the item scan when no item reaches the hopper's column (#1203, fixes #1220)
- Furnaces: look up the cooking recipe in an index, without cloning it (#1204)
- Faster Perlin volumes and climate search, same results (#1206)
- Faster feature decoration: region grid, ore column fast path, lazy biome cache (#1207)
- Perlin noise without libm floor or int-to-float conversions, same values (#1208)
- Keep the pointer locked on macOS in first person (#1225, fixes #1224)
- Reuse aquifer neighborhoods to speed up Overworld generation (#1229)
- Prepare with Minecraft's own Java 25 when no JDK is installed (#1214, fixes #1217)
- Load saved chunks 10% faster by retaining packed list palettes (#1223)
- Fix #1222: single player runs in the frame again until server players have vehicles (#1257, fixes #1222)
- fix(protocol): decode particle entity-data serializers so server holograms render (#1228)
- Mob pushes: one list per mob once a crowd is pushing (#1205, fixes #1221)
- Fix #1255: server players climbing down a ladder take no fall damage (#1263, fixes #1255)
Thanks to @ItsPotatoTime, @Yvonne-Aizawa, @feeldev12, @pirut, @rdbtCVS.
Install or update it from the Horizon launcher: it installs new versions by itself. New here? Get the launcher at https://playhorizon.dev. You need your own copy of Minecraft: Java Edition.
Not an official Minecraft product. Not approved by or associated with Mojang or Microsoft.
Contributors
@ItsPotatoTime, @Yvonne-Aizawa, @feeldev12, @pirut, @rdbtCVS