Updated for Java Edition 26.3 (October 2026).
The sulfur cube is a mob added in Java Edition 26.2 (Chaos Cubed, June 2026) that spawns in sulfur caves. Hand it a block and it swallows it, switches off its AI and turns into a physics object you can punch and push: a bouncy ball if it swallowed wood, a sled if it swallowed ice, a bomb if it swallowed TNT. Shears take the block back out.
| Spawns in | Sulfur caves (underground) |
|---|---|
| Behavior | Follows players holding a block it can absorb, and goes after block items on the ground |
| With a block inside | No AI; no fall or player damage; moves like the block’s archetype when hit |
| When killed | Splits into two small sulfur cubes |
| Growing | Feed a small sulfur cube slime balls to grow it into a large one |
| Carrying | Pick up a large one with an empty bucket; it can ride minecarts but not boats |
| Added in | Java Edition 26.2 (Chaos Cubed, June 2026); Bedrock Edition 26.30 |
How the sulfur cube works
Walk up to a sulfur cube while holding a block and interact with it. It absorbs the block, its AI turns off, and it becomes a physical object: it takes no fall damage or damage from players, and you can punch and push it around. How fast it flies, how much it bounces, how it slides and whether it floats all depend on the block inside. To get the block back, use shears on it; that also turns its AI back on.
Without a block, a sulfur cube follows any player holding a block it can absorb, and it will go after nearby block items on the ground by itself. Kill one and it splits into two small sulfur cubes. Feed a small one slime balls and it grows into a large one, and a large one can be scooped up in an empty bucket to carry it home.
Sulfur cube archetypes: what each block does
Each kind of block gives the cube a different archetype. These are the official ones:
| Archetype | Blocks | How it moves |
|---|---|---|
| Regular | Loose mineral and soil blocks | Medium speed, medium bounce |
| Bouncy | Wooden blocks | Fast, high bounce |
| Slow bouncy | Stone-like blocks | Slow, high bounce, medium air drag |
| Slow flat | Metal blocks | Slow, low bounce, medium air drag |
| Fast flat | Organic blocks | Fast, low bounce |
| Light | Wool blocks | Slow, high bounce, high air drag |
| Fast sliding | Icy blocks | Fast, no bounce, slides |
| Slow sliding | Mushroom blocks | Slow, no bounce, slides |
| High resistance | Soul sand and soul soil | Very slow, low bounce, high friction |
| Sticky | Honeycomb block | Like fast flat, but sticks to the ground with no bounce |
| Explosive | TNT | Like regular, with slightly more air drag; can be set off |
| Hot | Magma block | Like regular, but hurts anything it touches |
The official notes mark regular, bouncy and light as buoyant, so those float in liquids; hot uses the same properties as regular. A wood-filled cube is the classic ball: in the Chaos Cubed announcement, players use a birch-filled sulfur cube as a football.
TNT sulfur cubes
A sulfur cube holding TNT is a throwable bomb. The TNT inside can be primed by redstone, by fire (a dispenser with flint and steel works) or by a nearby explosion. Primed by fire or redstone, it has a 6-second fuse; set off by another explosion, the fuse is random, between 0.75 and 3 seconds, so chain reactions are unpredictable. Once it is primed you can’t bucket the cube or shear the TNT out, and the explosion doesn’t leave any small sulfur cubes behind. Getting a sulfur cube to absorb TNT earns the “Uh Oh” advancement.
Dispensers and sulfur cubes
Dispensers can do almost everything a player can: put a block into a sulfur cube or swap the one inside, use shears to take it out, and release a sulfur cube from a bucket. That makes automatic ball launchers and sorting toys possible with plain redstone.
Where to find sulfur cubes
Sulfur cubes spawn in the sulfur caves biome, so find the biome first. Look for a sulfur spring (yellow pools of sulfur and magma) on the surface and dig down toward Y 0. In our sample of 300 Java 26.3 seeds, the nearest sulfur caves were a median 428 blocks from spawn, horizontally, and 84% of seeds had some within 1,000 blocks. The sulfur caves page has seeds that open our seed map right on top of one.
What changed since it was added
The sulfur cube arrived in Chaos Cubed (Java 26.2, June 2026), and Wilderness Bound (26.3) only fixed bugs in it. Source: the official Java Edition 26.2 release notes.
