Mojang announces Minecraft National Park along with a fun building challenge

Mojang has knocked Minecraft's 15th anniversary celebration out of the park, releasing amazing content for players to enjoy and engage with. This content includes character creator items, capes, and even a teaser for an upcoming charity map known as the National Park. The map also came with the announcement of a building contest, whose winner will have their build officially featured on the map.

Detailed below is everything players need to know about both this new National Park map and the building challenge Mojang has announced alongside it.

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All about Minecraft's National Park map and community building challenge

The announcements

The post announcing the National Park map is released on two different platforms. The first is through the game's official X account, where it teases the building challenge and then links to a longer article on the official Minecraft website, the second platform.

The post on X also teases and shows off the central spawn hub for the National Park map. The announcement on the official website has additional teaser images of the rest of the park, showing off the amazing builds that will be featured within.

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What is the National Park map?

The different teaser images for the National Park map. (Images via Mojang)

The National Park map is a collaboration between Mojang and The Nature Conservatory, an environmental nonprofit. The map is intended to be a celebration of both Minecraft's beautiful biomes and an educational experience about conservationism.

There are nine different biomes touched on in the map—Grasslands, Taiga, Tundra, Cloud Forest, Jungle, Savannah, Dry Forest, Ocean, and Wetlands—along with ranger stations filled with history and educational information to learn.

One of the educational experiences that Mojang mentions specifically in the announcement centers around wildlife crossings, real-world structures built to allow animals to safely pass over or under busy roadways.

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What are the rules of the National Park map building challenge?

The bounding box for the National Park's building challenge. (Image via Mojang)

The rules of the building challenge are actually quite simple. Mojang's only hard rule is that the build must feature one of Minecraft's many mobs as well as one of its different plants. The build also must fit entirely within the provided bounding box. Other than that, builders are totally free to fill the space with whatever ideas they can come up with.

This also means that the only way to participate in the challenge is to make a build on the free Minecraft Marketplace map provided for the challenge. No superflat worlds are allowed here.

The only other requirement is that the build must then be recorded and published on any major social media platform with the hashtag #MinecraftMonument24. The bounding box also needs to be completely removed before the video is recorded. Make sure to only submit a single video, as each participant only gets a single entry.

The submissions will be judged on three categories: originality, composition, and adherence to the challenge theme.

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How long will the challenge last?

The spawn area of the National Park serves as great inspiration. (Image via Mojang)

The building challenge began on May 27, 2024, and will last until June 27. This means that potential submissions can be tweaked and worked on for the next month. Potential participants should have plenty of time to come up with new and interesting Minecraft build hacks to make any potential submissions all the more impressive.