All versions of Minecraft require Java to be installed on your PC to run the game. Traditionally, you needed to download Java from various publishers to ensure you had a compatible version installed.
Download Minecraft Java
- All versions of Minecraft up to and including Minecraft 1.16 will work with Java 8.
- Minecraft 1.17 requires Java 16 or higher.
- Minecraft 1.18 to Minecraft 1.20 requires Java 17 or higher.
- Minecraft 1.21 and above requires Java 21 or higher.
You can get Java either from Oracle or from someone who builds OpenJDK. For the purpose of Minecraft, they are essentially the same, but Oracle's "OTN" version (Oracle JDK uses "Oracle No-Fee Terms and Conditions" as of Java 17 LTS) requires a PAID license for commercial and production purposes. If you make money from streaming Minecraft or running a Minecraft server (even non-profit), you MUST use OpenJDK unless you want to figure out how to pay.
- Zulu OpenJDK (stable and development builds)
- Adoptium OpenJDK (recommended) (stable builds only, check github.com/adoptium for development builds)
- AdoptOpenJDK (stable and development builds)(From July 2021 no new JDKs will be produced. All production of further builds has been moved to adoptium.net)
- Oracle OpenJDK (stable and development builds) - zip packages only (no installer)
- Oracle JRE (NOT recommended unless you want to pay) (stable "OTN" builds)