Minecraft Advancements List and How to Get the Hard Ones

Minecraft Java Edition has 126 advancements, and the XP behind them is lopsided. Only 23 pay any experience, 3,590 points in all, and a single hidden challenge, How Did We Get Here?, pays 1,000 of it. That one reward is enough to take an empty XP bar to level 26, and it asks you to carry 34 status effects at the same moment.

This is the full list for Java 26.3, read from the game's own advancement files and checked against the Minecraft Wiki: every advancement by tab, the 25 challenges ranked by reward, the long checklists behind Adventuring Time, Monsters Hunted, A Balanced Diet and Two by Two, and the in-game descriptions that do not match what the game actually checks. The 26.4 snapshots, the latest being Snapshot 5 on October 20, 2026, already add a 127th advancement; that is near the end, along with how Bedrock's 133 achievements differ.

Advancements at a glance

How advancements work

• Per world, any mode. Advancements are earned and saved per world, in any game mode, per the Minecraft Wiki. The /advancement command grants and revokes them.
• Order does not matter. The tree is a guide, not a lock. Each advancement is independent, so you can earn a child before its parent.
• You see two steps ahead. A tab appears once you earn something in it, and the screen shows up to two advancements beyond each one you have. Nine stay hidden until you earn them: How Did We Get Here?, Voluntary Exile, Hero of the Village, Arbalistic, You've Got a Friend in Me, Smells Interesting, Birthday Song, Little Sniffs and Planting the Past.
• The frame tells you the type. A square frame is a task ("Advancement Made!"), a rounded one is a goal ("Goal Reached!"), and a spiked one is a challenge ("Challenge Complete!", in pink).
• Only challenges pay, and not all of them. The game's files give XP to 23 of the 25 challenges. It Spreads and With Our Powers Combined! have the challenge frame and pay nothing.
• The five roots count. Each tab's first advancement (Minecraft, Nether, The End, Adventure, Husbandry) is in the 126, but per the wiki it shows no toast and no chat message.

Whether completions are announced in chat is the show_advancement_messages game rule, covered in our game rules list.

Every advancement, tab by tab

Each table follows the tree from its root, so an advancement sits below the one it branches from. "What it takes" is what the game checks, which is not always what the in-game description says.

Minecraft tab (16)

Nether tab (23)

The strider pair needs a saddle, which you no longer have to find: it crafts from three leather and an iron ingot, as our saddle guide explains. For Subspace Bubble, the 1:8 maths is in our portal linking guide.

The End tab (9)

Our ender dragon guide covers the fight, and the End cities guide covers the shulkers and the elytra.

Adventure tab (47)

The trial chamber branch is in our trial chambers guide and the ominous vault loot table; Mob Kabob is in the spear guide, and the sculk sensors and catalysts behind Sneak 100 and It Spreads are in the deep dark guide.

Husbandry tab (31)

The odd ones each have a guide: the dried ghast in our happy ghast guide, the sulfur cube in the sulfur caves guide, the allay in the allay guide, and the sniffer branch in the sniffer guide.

The 25 challenges, ranked by XP

The Nether tab holds seven challenges worth 1,950 XP, 54% of all advancement XP, and the most valuable reward of all sits at the end of the potion branch in the picture above.

All 3,590 XP from an empty bar would take you to level 43, on the wiki's experience table. Serious Dedication is the 100 XP challenge that is a single item: a netherite hoe, made at a smithing table from a diamond hoe, a netherite ingot and a netherite upgrade template.

The checklist advancements

Several of the challenges are really checklists: you tick off a set of biomes, mobs, foods, animals, variants or templates. The advancement screen shows a progress count but not which entries you are missing. Per the wiki, in single player the advancements file in your world's save folder records each biome you have visited.

Adventuring Time: 56 biomes

Every one of the 56 biomes in the game's Overworld biome tag counts, and nothing else does. Nether and End biomes are ignored.

The four cave biomes are the ones a surface tour misses: the check is the biome you are standing in, so you have to be inside them underground. Two of the 56 are recent additions: sulfur caves joined in Java 26.2 in June 2026, and the dappled forest from Wilderness Bound in 26.3 in September. Our biomes guide covers the rarer biomes worth seeking out.

Monsters Hunted: 41 mobs

Monster Hunter takes any one of these; Monsters Hunted takes all 41.

Per the wiki, the warden and the skeleton horse are not required, and the creaking counts when you destroy its creaking heart. The wiki's advancement guide names the two bosses as the hardest kills, then the rarer ones: elder guardians in ocean monuments, ravagers in raids, evokers and vindicators in woodland mansions and raids, piglin brutes in bastions, creakings in pale gardens, and the zoglin, which means getting a hoglin into the Overworld. The four mobs added to the list in Mounts of Mayhem, the zombie horse, zombie nautilus, camel husk and parched, are covered in our spear guide and nautilus guide.

A Balanced Diet: 40 foods

Three entries take planning. The enchanted golden apple has no crafting recipe in the game data; it comes from chests, including dungeons, mineshafts, desert pyramids, ruined portals, bastion treasure rooms, ancient cities and woodland mansions, plus ominous vaults. Chorus fruit means a trip to the outer End islands. And the poisonous potato drops from 2% of fully grown potato crops, so plant a row and harvest until one turns up. Eat the pufferfish somewhere safe: it gives you Hunger, Nausea and Poison. Our food and hunger guide covers how hunger and saturation work.

Two by Two: 26 animals

Armadillo, axolotl, bee, camel, cat, chicken, cow, donkey, fox, frog, goat, hoglin, horse, llama, mooshroom, mule, nautilus, ocelot, panda, pig, rabbit, sheep, sniffer, strider, turtle and wolf.

Most of those breed with the food you would guess. These are the ones that do not, from the game's breeding-food tags and the wiki's breeding page:

The wiki adds that a trader llama does not count as a llama. Full taming and breeding detail is in our taming and breeding guide.

Cats, wolves and frogs

A Complete Catalogue wants all 11 cat variants tamed: tabby, tuxedo, red, Siamese, British shorthair, calico, Persian, ragdoll, white, jellie and black. Tame them with raw cod or raw salmon. The black cat is the slow one: per the wiki it generates in swamp huts, and village cats can only spawn black during a full moon.

The Whole Pack wants all 9 wolf variants, and the biome decides the variant:

The snowy wolf spawns alone, so a grove can take a while. Our wolf armor guide covers the scute repairs and the shears that Good as New and Shear Brilliance check for.

With Our Powers Combined! needs all three froglights at once, and each frog variant makes one when it eats a magma cube: a warm frog gives pearlescent, a cold frog verdant, and a temperate frog ochre, per the magma cube's loot table. The mangrove swamp guide covers frogs.

Smithing with Style: 8 templates

Crafting a New Look takes any of the 18 trim templates. Smithing with Style wants these eight specifically, and the loot tables spread them across seven structures, with only the ancient city holding two:

That is three dimensions and seven structures, counting the ocean monument the elder guardians live in. Our smithing templates guide has the drop odds and how to duplicate a template once you have it, and the archaeology guide covers brushing trail ruins.

How Did We Get Here?: the 17 effects you cannot brew

A Furious Cocktail asks for 17 effects, all of them potion effects: Fire Resistance, Infested, Invisibility, Jump Boost, Night Vision, Oozing, Poison, Regeneration, Resistance, Slow Falling, Slowness, Speed, Strength, Water Breathing, Weakness, Weaving and Wind Charged. How Did We Get Here? asks for those 17 plus 17 more that no brewing stand makes, all active at the same moment. The wiki's own guide calls it, "by most criteria," the hardest advancement in the game.

These are the extra 17, with the easiest source the wiki's guide gives for each:

The timing is the hard part. Per the wiki's guide, Raid Omen lasts only 30 seconds before the raid starts, and every omen begins as Bad Omen, so its route uses four ominous bottles: one for the raid that gives Hero of the Village, one for Trial Omen, one for Raid Omen and a last one for Bad Omen itself. A shulker has to be brought back from the outer End, a dolphin kept alive, and beacons running, which is why the guide builds the finish around a fixed contraption. Our status effects guide, conduit guide and beacon guide cover the individual pieces.

Breath of the Nautilus is the newest requirement: it joined the list in Java 1.21.11. Any How Did We Get Here? route written for Java 1.21.10 or earlier is at least one effect short.

Eight descriptions that mislead you

The in-game text is a hint, not the rule. In each of these, the game's advancement file or the wiki says something the description does not:

1. Total Beelocation says "a Bee Nest or Beehive". The game only checks for a bee nest; the wiki says a beehive cannot trigger it. Silk-touching your own beehive will not work.
2. Oh Shiny fails if you are wearing any gold armor. The check only counts a piglin you distract with no golden helmet, chestplate, leggings or boots on. A piglin picking up gold you threw counts as well as handing it over.
3. Two Birds, One Arrow says "piercing arrow". It has to come from a crossbow, the weapon Piercing goes on.
4. Who Needs Rockets? says 8 blocks. The game's check is 7 blocks of height after the wind charge's blast, and per the wiki you can gain that height by other means afterwards.
5. Hero of the Village says defend a village from a raid. Per the wiki, you also have to kill at least one raider yourself before the raid ends in victory.
6. Caves & Cliffs needs your last ground contact at Y 319 or higher and a landing at Y -59 or lower. Per the wiki, jumping before the fall tends not to award it.
7. Sweet Dreams says sleep in a bed. Per the wiki, lying down is enough, even if the night does not skip.
8. Free the End and Zombie Doctor go to one player. Per the wiki, only the player who lands the final blow on the dragon, or the one who fed the golden apple, gets them.

Java advancements vs Bedrock achievements

Bedrock does not have advancements. It has a separate achievement system, and these are the differences that matter:

The settings that lock Bedrock achievements, and which game rules count as cheats, are in our game rules list.

By our count, 41 of the 133 achievement names also appear in Java's list, ignoring capitals and punctuation. Some of the shared names do not ask for the same thing:

What the 26.4 snapshots change

Java 26.4 is the ice caves drop. It has no release date yet, and everything here comes from snapshots, so it can still change. Compared with 26.3, the game's advancement data in Snapshot 5 has moved like this:

Ice balls are what frostbites throw and drop, so the new advancement means fighting one with its own ammunition; our ice caves guide covers both.

One thing does not change yet. The Minecraft Wiki lists Freezing as a new requirement for A Furious Cocktail and How Did We Get Here?, dating it to Snapshot 3. The advancement files in Snapshots 3, 4 and 5 still list 17 and 34 effects with no Freezing, and Mojang's changelogs for those snapshots do not mention either advancement. On the current snapshot, you do not need Freezing for either one.

Advancements added since June 2025

If your checklist is older than these, it is short:

Quick Action Checklist

• Expect 126 on Java 26.3, 121 if you ignore the five tab roots, and 127 if 26.4 ships as the snapshots stand.
• Chase the XP where it is: How Did We Get Here? (1,000), then Adventuring Time and Hot Tourist Destinations (500 each). The Nether tab holds 54% of all advancement XP.
• Take the one-item 100 XP: Serious Dedication only needs a netherite hoe.
• Track Adventuring Time yourself. The screen only shows a count; the 56 biomes include four cave biomes you must stand inside.
• Skip the warden. Monsters Hunted does not need it, or the skeleton horse.
• Find an enchanted golden apple early. Of the 40 A Balanced Diet foods, it is the one that only comes from structure loot.
• Take off your gold armor before you throw gold at a piglin for Oh Shiny.
• Silk Touch a natural bee nest, not a beehive, for Total Beelocation.
• Put Piercing on a crossbow for Arbalistic and Two Birds, One Arrow.
• Collect four ominous bottles before you try How Did We Get Here?, and plan around Raid Omen's 30 seconds.
• On Bedrock, keep one world clean: cheats, Creative or an experiment locks its achievements for good.