Updated for Java Edition 26.3 (October 2026).
A beach is the strip of sand where temperate or warm land meets the ocean, and it is the only biome where turtles spawn. It is also one of the easiest biomes to reach: in our sample of 300 Java 26.3 seeds, 96% had a beach within 1,000 blocks of spawn, and every seed had one within 2,000. Come for sand, turtles and buried treasure.
| Dimension | Overworld |
|---|---|
| Where it generates | Along coasts between land and the ocean, often where a river meets the sea |
| How common | 2.4% of the surface in our sample (about 1 block in 42) |
| Distance from spawn | Median 283 blocks; within 1,000 blocks in 96% of seeds, within 2,000 in 100% (our sample) |
| Mobs | Turtles, plus the usual hostile mobs at night |
| Notable blocks | Sand over sandstone, sugar cane by the water, patches of clay and gravel in the shallows |
| Structures | Buried treasure, beached shipwrecks, ruined portals; no villages |
| Climate | Temperature 0.8, downfall 0.4 |
| Biome ID | minecraft:beach |
Beach, snowy beach and stony shore
Java has three coastline biomes. The plain beach is the sandy one. A “stone beach” or “rocky beach” is the stony shore, and a “cold beach” is the snowy beach; both are separate biomes with their own pages.
| Feature | Beach | Snowy beach | Stony shore |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground | Sand over sandstone | Sand under snow layers | Stone, with patches of gravel |
| Where | Temperate and warm coasts | Cold coasts next to snowy land | Where steep or mountainous land meets the sea |
| Turtles | Yes | No | No |
| Buried treasure | Yes | Yes | No |
| Beached shipwrecks | Yes | Yes | No |
| Older names | None | Cold Beach (until 1.13) | Stone Beach, then Stone Shore (renamed Stony Shore in 1.18) |
| How common (our sample) | 2.4% of the surface | 0.33% | 1.2% |
| Median distance from spawn (our sample) | 283 blocks | 1,846 blocks | 683 blocks |
The row that matters most is buried treasure. In Java it only generates under beaches and snowy beaches, so a treasure map never points at a stony shore. A beach biome with gravel at the waterline is still a beach; if the whole shoreline is bare stone, you are on a stony shore.
How to find a beach
Walk to the nearest coast. In our sample the median distance from spawn to a beach was 283 blocks, and a quarter of seeds had one within 91 blocks. Its edges touched a river 22% of the time, plain ocean 14%, forest 12%, plains 11% and lukewarm ocean 9%. The simplest route is to follow any river downstream until it reaches the sea; the river mouth is usually lined with sand.
These three Java 26.3 seeds spawn you on or next to a beach. Each coordinate is inside the biome, checked at block level.
| Seed | Beach at | From spawn | Map |
|---|---|---|---|
8527603118193051948 |
X 222, Z 58 | 8 blocks | Open on the map |
151334033170970103 |
X -70, Z -714 | 24 blocks | Open on the map |
1755130723589738324 |
X -26, Z -118 | 28 blocks | Open on the map |
In a world you already have, /locate biome minecraft:beach finds the nearest one (cheats on), or paste your seed into the biome finder. These are Java seeds; the same number on Bedrock gives a different world.
Turtles
Turtles spawn on beaches and in no other biome. They are the only animal on the beach’s spawn list, so every turtle you meet came from a beach.
Breed two turtles with seagrass. One of them swims back to the beach where it hatched and lays eggs in the sand. You can only pick up turtle eggs with a Silk Touch tool, and they only hatch on sand, so a turtle farm needs sand under the eggs. Keep zombies away: they go out of their way to trample turtle eggs.
When a baby turtle grows up, it drops a turtle scute. Five scutes make a turtle shell, a helmet that gives you 10 seconds of Water Breathing when you go under. That makes a beach worth a visit before an ocean monument trip.
Buried treasure and shipwrecks
Buried treasure chests sit a few blocks under the sand of beaches and snowy beaches. You find them with a buried treasure map, which comes from shipwreck map chests and ocean ruin chests. Every buried treasure chest has a heart of the sea, the item you need for a conduit.
Beached shipwrecks are shipwrecks that generate on the beach itself instead of in the water, often half buried in sand. They have the same chests as ocean shipwrecks, so check the map chest for a treasure map. Ocean shipwrecks and ocean ruins are usually a short swim away.
Sand, sandstone and sugar cane
A beach is the closest source of sand for most worlds. A layer of sandstone sits under the sand, which keeps the beach from collapsing into caves below and gives you sandstone without crafting. Smelt the sand for glass. Sugar cane grows along the waterline, so a beach is a good place to start paper for books and maps. Clay patches in the shallows give you clay for bricks.
Villages don’t generate on beaches. At night the usual hostile mobs spawn on the open sand; drowned spawn in the ocean next to the beach, not on the beach itself.
What changed in 2025-26
In Wilderness Bound (Java 26.3, September 2026), explorer maps became their own items, and buried treasure maps can no longer be zoomed out in a crafting table or cartography table.
In Tiny Takeover (Java 26.1, March 2026), baby turtles got a new model and texture. The beach biome itself didn’t change in any 2025-26 drop.
Source: the official 26.3 and 26.1 release notes.
How we measured
The numbers on this page come from our own seed map engine, running Java Edition 26.3 world generation. We generated 300 random seeds and sampled every 16th block across a 10,240 by 10,240 block square centered on each world’s spawn. “How common” is the biome’s share of those samples; “distance from spawn” is how far the nearest sample of the biome was. The seeds above were picked from the same run, and each coordinate was re-checked at block level.
