Minecraft ideas 2026 - tutorials for 36 inspiring creations

Minecraft remains one of the best games of all time over a decade on from its release, but spending such a long time in one game could lead to you running out of ideas. We've been there: you've already built a city, a castle, or even a Wild West outpost, so what's next?

Luckily, there are plenty of unique builds, farms, and creations out there to inspire your next Minecraft project. This list includes everything from simple-but-essential base designs to epic creations of mind-blowing proportions. So, whether you're looking for Minecraft ideas that will take you a few hours or a few months to build, look no further; these builds can be copied directly or simply used to inspire your next creation.

Here are the best Minecraft ideas:

Aesthetic builds

Alluring Cave Entrance

We all need a mine or accessible cave in a Minecraft world, somewhere to access the terrifying depths of the world and seek out the most valuable resources, but they don't always look that nice. If you mine or there is a cave entrance near your base, it can also be a dangerous place to let monsters out. That's where an attractive and safe mine entrance build comes in.

The above image of TheMythicalSausage's cave entrance build is just one way to do this, and your build depends on the surrounding area, such as whether you mine down from a flat space or find a cave entrance in a mountain. When it comes to your own mine or cave entrance, the world is your oyster: you can make it look like a building like this image, terraform a natural-looking mound, have a simple realistic mine entrance, or use a theme or color palette to build something up. But take this as your sign to do something with the space while you're looking for new build ideas.

Fountain

If you're anything like us, you've tried - and failed - to build a fountain in Minecraft multiple times. Whether you want one outside your home, in your local village, or near your magnificent large city builds, it often seems Minecraft water just has a mind of its own and it's near impossible to build a fountain of any size.

Luckily, ItsMarloe is here to help with a handy guide to four different fountain designs, each getting bigger and more magnificent. From these simple designs, you can add your own details or change up the blocks and colors to make it your own.

Pond

A pond can be the perfect finishing touch to a nice outdoor area, but, let's face it, the natural areas of water in the Minecraft overworld aren't very aesthetically pleasing. Luckily, it's pretty simple to just make your own from scratch.

The key to the perfect pond is in making it two or three blocks deep, replacing the floor with the perfect mix of stone and dirt, and decorating the area with natural blocks like mossy cobblestone, moss, and coarse dirt, and plants that match the surrounding area. Your pond also shouldn't look like it's man-made, so try to make a natural-looking shape. Light the water with sea pickles, place some pretty lily pads on the surface of the water, and rehome some tropical fish in your new pond, and voila! The perfect garden accessory. The picture above is from a pond tutorial by Goldrobin on YouTube.

Garden

A Minecraft garden can be anything from just sprucing up some of the space outside your house to a huge public garden full of exotic plants and custom trees. Big or small, there are so many natural blocks and items you can use to flesh out a garden, and you can use every color imaginable or theme your garden to match the biome you're in.

To get you started with some simple inspiration, BlueNerd showcases five different small garden designs in the video above, from a neutral desert garden, to a rustic wood garden, and even a modern white build with a bandstand.

Stained Glass

This is more of a sub-build idea, but why not spruce up your houses, castles, and city builds with stained-glass windows? There are plenty of choices when it comes to stained-glass panes, and some creative Minecraft builders even manage to make stained-glass designed work on small areas, like this narrow church window design by Thatoldkid. The bigger you go, the better options you have, though, and we love the stunning gothic gradient windows above by Shells. We also recommend this Shells video for more gorgeous stained-glass designs.

Animal Barn

If you are tired of using a boring fence to keep your animals penned in, there are plenty of unique and colorful ways to make your animal farms look a little more interesting. One of the best, and most appropriate, is a classic farm-style barn. We love this huge, red-and-white one from Goldrobin on YouTube, complete with an easy-to-follow tutorial.

If you're good at building and don't need to follow the tutorial to the tee, you can make this barn as big or small as you need it, and you could even add more sections to the outside - like the stables - to expand your livestock capacity. From there, you could even build a huge range base to fit the theme.

Aquarium

You know what they say: there's nothing classier than having your own custom aquarium. Create your own aquarium inside your home, or go all out and build a dedicated aquarium within your base. Take your build to another level by using Minecraft mods to add even more fish, including the Minecraft Axolotl. A custom aquarium is a great way to add color to your home in a natural way. Sure, you could use flowers like everyone else, but where's the fun in that?

Fantasy builds

Dragon's Lair

This entry was inspired by a duo of builders on our favorite Minecraft server, so there's no tutorial or YouTube video, but the image above is spectacular enough that we hope it motivates you to build something similarly great.

Ontani and Carbonn are the pair of builders, and they chose this incredible dragon's lair build for their base on the Serenity server. Perched atop a large mountain, a huge red dragon bears its wings as if ready to swoop in on its prey, protecting the fantasy-medieval bases from intruders. I mean, we certainly haven't dared to set foot near this base without the residents' permission. We also love that the buildings themselves match the magnificent beast's scales, tying this Minecraft build together, and you could keep building out until you had a full kingdom under the dragon's watchful eye.

Pirate Ship

Shipwrecks are one of the most fruitful structures in Minecraft. There are usually a lot of them dotted around the ocean, and you can find anything from diamonds and iron to enchanted items, treasure maps, and food by searching through them. Sadly, they're not the best-looking Minecraft structures. Perhaps they'll get an official makeover in the future, but in the meantime, why not overhaul a beached shipwreck, or even build an entirely new ship?

The easiest way to start a ship build for beginners would be to build upon an existing shipwreck. While most are underwater, you can find the odd shipwreck above ground or water. You can even use Minecraft commands to make finding one easier. If you're confident enough, you could build a huge pirate ship floating on the surface, just like the one above from Lord Dakr. This one is inspired by the Queen Anne's Revenge from Pirates of the Caribbean, but you could use this as inspiration for your very own design.

Pirate Cove

With your pirate ship complete, you need somewhere to stash your booty. Well, have you ever discovered a small air pocket while exploring underwater? Use this space to create a secret pirate cove hidden away below the depths. These areas are surprisingly large inside, but be careful when chipping away at the walls, as you may accidentally break into the surrounding water. As long as you avoid any sudden leakages, you should have a permanent underwater base to surprise your friends with.

Icy Wizard Tower

Of course, the first thing you think of building when starting a new Minecraft world is usually your base. You need a safe and good-looking house to come home to after a day of adventuring, and somewhere to keep your ever-growing inventory. Who's to say that your base has to be a boring house, though? Why not become the wizard you always dreamed you could be and move into this frosty fantasy tower? You can keep some extra valuable items inside, safe from nearby creepers, and keep an eye out for any approaching pillager patrols from atop your towering base. If this isn't quite the build for you, we've got plenty of other inspiring Minecraft tower ideas over in our dedicated guide.

Sword Nether Portal

Here's another way to turn your Nether portal into the centerpiece of your base with a unique design - in this case, a massive sword lodged into the ground. This design also includes the other half of the sword in the Nether to give the effect that it's being pierced through the ground. You'll need almost 60 obsidian for this build, among other things, but the design more than justifies its crafting cost.

Functional builds

Storybook Nether Portal

We're obsessed with this truly beautiful Nether portal design by grimm_sama. This would look absolutely incredible in any fantasy world, perhaps paired with any of our favorite fantasy builds above. You could even change the colors and design if you wanted, but we do have a soft spot for this cute axolotl.

Beautiful Stone Bridge

A Minecraft bridge is perhaps one of the most varied things you can choose to build: from a giant, looming stone bridge between mountain sides to a small wooden bridge over a stream, there are plenty of design ideas here. And, not only can they be beautiful additions to the area around your base, they're also incredibly useful, allowing quick and safe passage over bodies of water or deathly falls.

There are so many Minecraft bridge designs that it's hard to choose just one idea to place here for inspiration, but we narrowed it down to this small stone bridge from Spudetti. Not only is it gorgeous, but we think it's the perfect inspiration for what you can do with stone, be it a small, pretty bridge like this, or that mammoth bridge to which we allude above - just picture this bridge on a bigger scale. Alternatively, keep it small and switch out some of those stone bricks and cobblestone for mossy variants for a more natural, aged look.

Simple Spider XP Farm

While you might not 'level up' in Minecraft, per se, XP is incredibly useful, even in long-term single-player survival worlds, if you want to keep your gear going for longer or make the most of your enchantment table. As such, an XP farm can be a great, easy build to add to your world to make sure you always have enough XP - or the chance to get it - when you need it.

There are many options for XP farms, but the simplest is using a dungeon spawner in the overworld. It's a fairly good rule as you're exploring the caves that, if you find one, don't destroy it, simply cover it in torches to prevent anything spawning from within. Then, when you're ready, come back and turn it into an automated system like this super simple design from Shulkercraft. Remember, though, that different mobs might require different builds, so have a look around for a tutorial that suits your spawner - we've got a few on our guide to the best Minecraft farm design ideas for your world.

Simple Cow Cooker

Speaking of farms, hunting for food can be a time-consuming process, and you can eliminate this chore by setting up a steak cooker. Look, we never said this was going to be the most humane build you've ever seen, but it sure is efficient. The general idea is that the adult cows breed at the top of the construction, creating new cows that fall to the bottom of the structure. These cows are then pushed into lava, cooking them instantly. The cooked food is sent directly into the chest located below, giving you access to cooked meat whenever you need it.

Automatic Wheat Farm

If you want to sleep well at night and would rather use a harvesting method that doesn't harm any animals, you could set up a wheat farm. This build does require quite a bit more effort than the cow farm above, but once you've finished, you won't ever have to make changes to it. The wheat garden produces items automatically, thanks to the Minecraft villager who works tirelessly to ensure you always have wheat in your chests. You could even set up a handy Minecraft crafter system to turn that wheat into bread. For more villager uses and info on breeding them, check out our Minecraft village guide.

Villager Trading Hall

Speaking of terrifying villager trading halls, you might prefer something dark and gloomy to the colorful market stalls above, so we're covering that, too. In the video above, MythicalSausage builds four trading hall styles to inspire your own, but we personally love the dark, Nether-themed room. You can always use these as a base for your own palettes and designs, though - perhaps an Ancient City or Trial Chamber-inspired hall - and remember you can make them as spacious or claustrophobic for your villagers as you deem fit.

Minecart Railway

Looking for a new way to travel throughout your Minecraft world? Create an underground minecart rail station in each of your settlements instead of having to trek everywhere. This can be incredibly useful when mining for resources, as you always have a minecart nearby to take you back to any of your homes.

Fox Lodge

If you aren't sure what sort of base you want to build, why not build one inspired by your favorite Minecraft mob! This Fox base, inspired by the Fox Lodge Minecraft Lego set, is completely adorable from the outside, and spacious and useful from the inside.

The simple build tutorial by ManDooMiN on YouTube includes the full interior, which is helpful if you're as useless as we are at kitting out your Minecraft house. If you want to make it truly yours, why not make it white like the arctic fox? You could even try building a similar base inspired by other mobs, like the Minecraft Armadillo, or even an Ender Dragon, and hope it scares off enemies.

Underwater Base

If you've built every type of base you can think of on land, including a cute fox, why not go for an underwater home? An underwater build is perfect for players who want a relaxing area to zone out in after a hard day. A secret advantage of an underwater home in survival mode is that it's arguably safer than having a home on land - you won't have to worry about any stray creepers lurking in the darkness. This build does look a lot nicer if you use Minecraft shaders to make the water clear, but it isn't essential.

Landmark builds

Statue of Liberty

There are multiple inspiring builds out there to look at, from mammoth realistic Lady Liberties to Minecraft-inspired mock-ups. Our favorite has to be this villager-style statue built by Goldrobin. With the 1.21 update, there are even more copper blocks to decorate your build with, too, so you could place copper bulbs around the base, or stylize the surrounding area with industrial grates for a New York feel.

Goldrobin builds the statue in oxidized blocks right away, but if you want to watch it change color, make sure to use original copper blocks in yours. The prismarine blocks will look a little strange at first, so if you want full immersion, you could change them to copper grates or trapdoors following the addition of the new blocks.

Burj Khalifa

When it comes to Minecraft builds, there are pretty much no limits, especially since the world height was increased in Minecraft Caves and Cliffs. Well, Minecraft YouTuber DeltaFlame did just about the most impressive thing you could think of doing with the new world height and built a replica of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. Whether or not you want to go to this much trouble yourself, it's a very impressive build to watch come to life, and it's the perfect inspiration for replicating any real-world building or monument.

Pyramid

Ever wondered how some large-scale Minecraft monuments are built? Here's a time-lapse of a pyramid being built using Minecraft WorldEdit, one of the best Minecraft mods designed to make building massive structures much easier compared to doing everything by hand. This pyramid build took FallenQbuilds just under 18 hours to complete, though we imagine it'll take a newcomer much longer to build something like this.

Roleplay builds

Pet Shop

Now there are multiple wolf variants, just as there are cat variants, and a whole host of other passive Minecraft mobs, we can't see any reason why you wouldn't want a cute pet shop in your Minecraft world - especially if you play with friends.

You'll have to take most pets to the shop with a lead, as taming them yourself might mean no one else can take their new pet home. That said, there's surely big business for those adorable wolf variants that are hard to find, with some located in rarer Old Growth Taigas and Wooded Badlands. Additionally, you can stock your pet shop with Minecraft horses, Minecraft armadillos, and even rare blue Minecraft axolotl - and don't forget wolf armor and treats!

Cute Stores

We needed to look this one up recently for build inspiration on our Minecraft server, and we were so inspired by these cute and easy shops by My Minecraft House that we had to include them. While there are tons of Minecraft shop inspiration out there, and we already have market stalls on this list, we just love these pretty small shops, which you could make any color you like and build an entire street of them, in different shapes and sizes, even.

Market Stalls

Improve your local Minecraft village with some cute market stalls for your villagers to work from! This adorable little flower stall was built by YouTuber Umibogaming, with a farmer villager inside selling their wares. With a lot of villagers and market stalls, you could have any trade you possibly want. Until now, we've usually done this in the form of terrifying and very inhumane villager trading halls, but we're thinking market stalls might be nicer - both in the eyes and for the villagers themselves.

Medieval Tavern

If you want to bring your TTRPG world to live in Minecraft, or you're building a medieval town, neither would be complete without a tavern in which to sit back and relax with a flagon of ale. We love this top-heavy tavern from Junopii and Shovel241builds, and while you can use this image for inspiration, the blueprint is available on Junopii's Patreon to help you build an exact replica.

Factory

This cool factory build from MrMarkCrafter on YouTube gave us an idea - what better place to hide away all your ugly redstone contraptions than in a working Minecraft factory? Want to build a bunch of automated farms and redstone contraptions? Why not put them all under one roof! Redstone machines can be pretty noisy, too, so you could build your factory fairly far from your home, set yourself up with a Nether or mine cart transportation system, and live in peace.

Gravel Pit and Excavator

Gravel is one of the most useful blocks in Minecraft. It's used in multiple crafting recipes, such as colored concrete, TNT, and coarse dirt. It's one of those blocks, then, that you tend to need a lot of if you want to experience the most of Minecraft.

While you can get gravel anywhere, from collecting it from the bottom of the ocean to obtaining it naturally while mining, the best place to source gravel in large quantities is gravelly hills biomes, where gravel replaces most other blocks on the top layers of ground. What a cool spot, then, to build a little digger and some gravel piles, to make your go-to gravel-gathering location look that little bit more appealing and functional.

Haunted Mansion

If you, like us, love anything remotely spooky, what better to build in Minecraft than a cool haunted mansion? We don't recommend building it in Hardcore mode like this creator, but it would be a great addition to your next survival or creative world - and we think it works perfectly with the build idea below, too.

Library

There are librarians, there are interactive bookshelves, and there are even naturally spawning libraries inside Strongholds, so it should seem like an obvious idea to try building a stunning Minecraft library if you're looking for a new idea.

OK, it might not be the most useful build, but it is more so since Redstone bookshelves were introduced in Minecraft 1.20. Just think of all the trap doors and secrets your library could hold. We also think it would be the perfect place to house your Minecraft enchantment table, and it could be a simple addition to your base, even if it's not as big as the one above.

Village in a Tree

This one's a big undertaking if you want to try it yourself, but we had to share this stunning build after it left us speechless. This incredible Minecraft village in the trees comes from Slooter2 on Reddit, and the image above is the best to give you an idea of what you're looking at, but it doesn't do justice to the village itself, so we recommend checking out the other screenshots by following the link above to the original Reddit post. In short, though, Slooter2 has built this gigantic custom tree to house an entire village on multiple branches and levels, with a majestic view of the world below.

Epic builds

Tribute to H.R. Giger

H.R. Giger's iconic biomechanical designs are the bedrock for Ridley Scott's Alien movie franchise, inspiring books, films, and of course, videogames, including 2022's Scorn. Everbloom Games, a team of professional Minecraft builders, has put together a sprawling tribute to Giger's work, and it's as unsettling as you can imagine.

Between the vast atriums cloaked in shadow and a fully realized space jockey nestled in its cockpit, these blocky reconstructions manage to capture the spirit of Giger's work like never before.

The Fossil Path of the Great Serpent

There's no doubt you've lived in a regular house, but have you ever thought about living inside the corpse of a giant serpent? Though Minecraft mobs aren't anywhere near as big as this serpent is, the idea of taking shelter within the bones of a giant creature sounds perfect in a survival game. If your building skills are up to it, you could also take a similar approach with mythical creatures like dragons.

End Portal Room

The spectacular build above was built by the creative Proof_Potential2956 on Reddit entirely in survival mode, and it certainly gives us ideas. That said, we're not sure if we have the patience for this tough job. Presumably, the builder must have cleared out the Stronghold from around the portal before building this room, and we know from experience how much work those foggy glass floors take to build. Respect.

Hopefully, these creative Minecraft ideas have given you enough inspiration for your next world. Sometimes, all you need to inspire your next build is a beautiful site, though, so check out our Minecraft seeds guide if you're still struggling for ideas.