How to Update your Existing Minecraft World to a New Version

When Minecraft releases new updates, you may be keen to update your existing world to experience all of the new features. Updating your singleplayer world is relatively easy, but you should make sure to create a backup in case any issues arise.

How you back up and update your world depends on whether you play Minecraft: Bedrock Edition or Minecraft: Java Edition.

#Updating a Java Edition World

1. Open Minecraft and navigate to the Singleplayer tab.

2. Select the world you want to update and click Edit.

3. Click Make Backup and close the game.

4. Relaunch the game in the newer version, then join your world.

Your world will automatically load new features or biomes in newly generated chunks. If you wish to locate the backup you took later on, you can do so by clicking the Open Backups Folder button in the Edit menu.

#Updating a Bedrock Edition World

1. Open the game and click Play.

2. Click the Edit button next to the world you would like to update.

3. Scroll to the bottom and select Copy World to make a backup copy.

Alternatively to making a world copy, you can also click the Export World button to download a copy of the Minecraft world file itself to your computer.

4. After creating a backup, join your world normally.

Your world will now load the new version of Minecraft in newly-generated chunks!