Minecraft Preview 26.40.27 Adds Dappled Forest and Abandoned Camp

Mojang has pushed Minecraft Preview 26.40.27 to Bedrock testers, and the build carries the first testable version of the studio’s third game drop of 2026. The new Dappled Forest biome is the headline, with Poplar Trees in three leaf colors, Shelf Mushrooms, and Red Shrubs to find among its autumn leaves. The structural change that will touch far more of the Overworld is the Abandoned Camp, a wool-tent site that Mojang is now placing inside 18 different surface biomes, each with its own variant.

The Preview lands roughly a quarter before the unnamed Third Drop 2026 is scheduled to ship, which the Minecraft Wiki dates to Q3 2026 across Java Edition 26.3 and Bedrock Edition 26.50. Features are gated behind the “Drop 3 of 2026” experimental toggle in Bedrock. Mojang is collecting feedback at feedback.minecraft.net and bug reports at bugs.mojang.com, both linked in the full Minecraft Preview 26.40.27 patch notes. The drop was first announced at Minecraft Live in May 2026.

A New Autumn Forest in Bedrock Testing

The Dappled Forest is a new cold-region woodland, the first new Overworld biome added in this Preview cycle. It generates near cold biomes, bordering plains, sunflower plains, and cherry groves according to the Dappled Forest’s climate, colors, and spawn roster, and never sits beside other woodland biomes. The trees are the draw: Poplar Trees in red, orange, and yellow leaf variants, with fallen Poplar Trees scattered across the ground and Shelf Mushrooms growing on their trunks.

The soil underfoot is orange-brown grass and coarse dirt, carpeted with leaf litter, red shrubs, and brown mushrooms. The biome’s water is a very dark blue, almost black, and the wiki notes it is more opaque than in any other biome, with white underwater fog at twice the usual density. The wiki’s data table sets the climate at a temperature of 0.6 and a downfall of 0.6, and the Vibrant Visuals preset applies a swamp-style volumetric fog that gives the forest a dull, foggy look. The poplar canopy is dense enough to shade most of the terrain, with spruce trees generating only sparsely underneath.

The mobs that spawn here lean cold. Sheep, chicken, cow, pig, rabbit, and fox are the passive and neutral residents, with their cold variants applied where they exist. Hostile spawns follow the standard monster roster for a cold biome:

• Sheep, cold chicken, cold pig, cold cow, fox, rabbit (creature category)
• Creeper, skeleton, slime, spider, zombie, enderman, witch, zombie villager (monster category)
• Glow squid (underground water creature)
• Bat (ambient)

The New Poplar Tree Ships in Red, Orange, and Yellow

Poplar Trees are the new tree type, and each variant has its own falling leaf particles that match the leaf color. Poplar Leaves drop Poplar Saplings, and those saplings can grow into any of the three color variants at random, so a planted sapling is a random outcome. The trunk is Poplar Log, which can be crafted into a new set of Poplar wood blocks, and forest ambience sounds are tied to the Poplar Leaf blocks themselves. Poplar Saplings are also available from the Wandering Trader, a quiet buff to a character players often ignore.

Mojang flagged one known issue: some Vibrant Visuals settings are not being applied correctly to Poplar Leaf blocks right now, so the new leaves may not glow the way the rest of the forest does until a follow-up Preview. The fix is expected to land in a future Preview build, with no workaround listed.

The Abandoned Camp Reaches Eighteen Biomes

The bigger structural change in this Preview is the Abandoned Camp, a new surface structure that Mojang is now placing inside 18 Overworld biomes. Each biome gets its own variant, with fence materials and surrounding blocks tailored to fit: pale oak fences in the Pale Garden, bamboo in the Bamboo Jungle, cherry in the Cherry Grove, and so on. The biome list spans from Meadow and Forest to Sparse Jungle, Swamp, Savanna, Wooded Badlands, and Pale Garden, per the Abandoned Camp’s biome list and structure rules. The structure is gated behind the same experimental toggle as the Dappled Forest.

The camp itself is a wool tent built from white wool stairs, which is also why this Preview adds Wool Stair and Wool Slab blocks in 16 colors at the same time, the building block the tents are made from. Inside and around the tent sit chests and barrels with loot, an unlit campfire, and sometimes a crop farm or a small tree, all sitting on a floor of dirt, gravel, and path blocks per the wiki. Cobwebs and leaves sometimes replace the wool stairs to give the tent a ruined look.

Rarely, an oxidized copper chest can spawn with more valuable loot than the standard containers, per the wiki’s structure description. That copper-chest twist is the only loot signal the wiki has published so far. The per-biome loot tables for the regular chests and barrels remain undocumented on the page. Mojang’s Preview article lists the structure as having “Various Chests and Barrels with loot” but does not break down what each holds.

But if nobody’s been to the dappled forest before, who built the abandoned camp?

Mojang, the game’s developer, poses the question in the intro to its Preview article on minecraft.net, and the studio is leaving the mystery intact for now. The phrasing is part of the campfire framing Mojang has built around the new biome.

These biomes cluster into five families, each with its own visual variant:

Shelf Mushrooms Grow on Poplar Trees

Shelf Mushrooms are the new fungus that grows on Poplar Trees and fallen Poplar Trees, and they come in small and large sizes. Bone meal on a small Shelf Mushroom grows it into a large one, and a large Shelf Mushroom drops two Shelf Mushroom items when broken. The wiki confirms they can be used like other mushrooms to make stews, a recipe change that extends to Suspicious Stew when paired with a small flower. They also have a slight bounciness when stepped on, similar to beds.

Red Shrubs are the new decorative plant block, found in small patches in the Dappled Forest, usable in the composter. Using bone meal on a Red Shrub grows another Red Shrub in a random adjacent space if one fits. Both new plants lean into the autumn atmosphere Mojang has built around this drop, alongside the new Wool Stair colors that the tents are built from.

Arrow Damage Now Scales with Velocity

The Preview also ships a long list of bug fixes and technical updates that go beyond the experimental toggle. Arrow damage now scales with velocity instead of being fully randomized, tracked as MCPE-161077, which makes crossbow shots from mobs and players behave more predictably. Piglins were previously treated as if their crossbow arrows came from a regular bow, and that quirk is now corrected. All arrows fired by mobs using a Crossbow now share the same damage behavior regardless of the firing mob.

Frame pacing is now available in Preview on Xbox platforms, disabled by default and togglable in Video settings. The screen no longer jitters when the Screen Distortion accessibility setting is changed. The Storage tab now shows a specific error modal when an upload to cloud fails because the cloud is full.

Five of the more visible changes shipped in this Preview. The full list is in the patch notes.

• Fixed a crash when opening the game from an invite notification on Android.
• Fixed clouds rendering in front of transparent blocks like glass when Vibrant Visuals is on.
• Fixed colored light-emitting blocks no longer emitting light in worlds using the official RTX texture pack.
• Sheep now eat grass after being sheared.
• Added a Delete button on the Subscriptions tab for expired Realms.

Where This Leaves the Third Drop 2026

Preview 26.40.27 is the testbed for the Third Drop 2026, the unnamed update Mojang announced at Minecraft Live in May 2026. The Q3 2026 release plan for Java and Bedrock lists Java Edition 26.3 and Bedrock Edition 26.50 as the release versions, with a target window later in the year. Features that ship in this Preview, from the Dappled Forest to the Abandoned Camp, are candidates for that release. Mojang’s standard practice is to keep iterating in Preview until the full drop is locked.

The open-world and sandbox design space that studios like Mojang work in gives the studio room to fold community feedback into the final feature set, a pattern explored in pieces on how open-world and sandbox game design has evolved. For now, players who want to walk among the poplars early can opt into the “Drop 3 of 2026” experimental toggle in Bedrock Preview and start scouting for tents. Mojang’s feedback and bug-tracker pages, linked in the Preview article, are where the final shape of the drop will be argued out.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Minecraft Preview 26.40.27?

It is the latest Bedrock Preview build, carrying the first testable version of the unnamed Third Drop 2026. The Preview adds the Dappled Forest biome, Poplar Trees in three leaf colors, Shelf Mushrooms, Red Shrubs, the Abandoned Camp structure, and Wool Stair and Wool Slab blocks in 16 colors.

When will the Dappled Forest release?

The Minecraft Wiki dates the Third Drop 2026 to Q3 2026, with Java Edition 26.3 and Bedrock Edition 26.50 as the release versions. Features in Preview 26.40.27 are candidates for that release, gated behind the “Drop 3 of 2026” experimental toggle until then.

What is the Abandoned Camp?

It is a new surface structure consisting of a wool tent with chests and barrels, which generates in 18 Overworld biomes. Each biome has its own variant, with rare oxidized copper chests holding more valuable loot than the standard containers.

How do you test the new features?

On Bedrock, opt into the “Drop 3 of 2026” experimental toggle inside Minecraft Preview. Feedback goes to feedback.minecraft.net and bug reports to bugs.mojang.com, both linked in Mojang’s Preview article.

What new blocks come with the Poplar wood set?

The Preview adds Poplar Logs, Poplar Leaves in red, orange, and yellow variants, and a craftable Poplar wood set. Shelf Mushrooms, which grow on Poplar Trees, come in small and large sizes, with the large ones bouncy like beds.