2025! What a year for the Minecraft community. We’ve seen a whole host of new events, SMPs and projects coming onto the scene – not to mention big things from those already existing. There have been stunning builds, impressive speedruns, innovation in redstone and mechanics, mind-blowing storytelling, incredible support for various charities, and so much more besides. The Minecraft community has so much passion, skill, kindness, and creativity, and I am so happy to be able to celebrate and share with you the positive stories and opportunities that it holds.
I have a lot to talk about in this letter! I’ll reveal:
- the top 10 Sphere News articles of 2025
- new Sphere News features we’re trialling
- how to get more involved with Sphere News into 2026
But, before we get into all of that, I’d love to give a massive thank you to everyone who’s read or supported Sphere News over the last year. Every view, comment, or share means the world to us and keeps us being able to do what we do – so thank you!
2025’s top articles
Let’s count down the top ten!
10. Pangi shares his thoughts ahead of his first MCC
On June 1st, content creator Pangi played in his first MC Championship, live from Rotterdam as part of TwitchCon’s Twitch Rivals. We interviewed him at the convention the day before the event – and considering his team then went on to win, I’d say we made a pretty good call with writing this one!
9. Lifesteal meets Block Wars: Hannahxxrose on bringing two titans together
We chatted to Hannahxxrose, who organised an invitational collaboration with Block Wars to celebrate the fourth year anniversary of Lifesteal SMP.
8. Three years on, advancement racing is back
All-Advancements-esque speedrunning tournament “Most%” returned after three years. We spoke to organiser Oliver (who you may know as co-founder of MCSR Ranked) about bringing it back.
7. Solve puzzles and uncover mysteries in upcoming SMP “House Heir”
Ahead of the launch of mystery-solving SMP House Heir, we spoke to co-organiser arteamissing about this storytelling server in which players solved clues with the hopes of inheriting a lord’s wealth and mansion.
6. Vampires SMP: an interview with Smajor
And yes, we’ve already made the “Interview with the Vampire” joke. Early in the SMP, we chatted to Smajor (a.k.a. Dangthatsalongname) about how he was getting to live out his Disney villain fantasy.
More than a hundred people – including our own journalist Rhubarb – travelled from all over the world to Bournemouth University for the Lewis Fulham Invitational Speedrunning Tournament, the biggest LAN Minecraft speedrunning tournament ever.
4. Girloffs: elevating women in competitive Minecraft speedrunning
Another speedrun article – this one exploring how a new tournament, Girloffs, changed the scarce representation for women in the competitive Minecraft speedrunning scene.
3. New mods, same crazy experiments – Yogscast to bring back YogLabs for second season
YogLabs was a modded Minecraft series that ran from 2012 to 2016. In this exclusive interview with Yogscast co-founder Lewis, we discussed bringing this iconic series back for its second season in 2025.
2. On vampires & vengeance: an interview with AvidMC
You guys sure loved Vampires SMP, because both our articles about it made the top ten, with this one coming in second place! Between episodes 5 and 6, we interviewed Avid about his experience making content on the server, as well as diving into his character and what was to come next for his lore.
and our top article of the year was…
1. How MCSR Ranked is changing the game of competitive Minecraft
Following the MCSR Ranked Grand Finals in May, which streamed to a record 12,500 people, we spoke to a selection of top Minecraft speedrunners about the rise of MCSR Ranked. This was only Sphere News’ second article about speedrunning, but paved the way for it to become one of our main categories.
Sphere News into 2026, and new experimental features
2025 saw some big changes and updates to Sphere News. Today marks one year since we moved from the digital magazine format to this website, allowing for ongoing coverage throughout the month, as well as a visual rebrand. Across the year we covered hundreds of different projects and events, interviewed a wide variety of content creators and organisers, ran competitions and giveaways, had IRL representatives at TwitchCon EU in Rotterdam and the Lewis Fulham Invitational in the UK, and touched lots of different corners of the Minecraft community.
We have no plans to stop here – not only will we be continuing to report on Minecraft news into 2026, but we also have some exciting new features to trial. The eagle-eyed among you may have already noticed that there is now an “account” option on the top menu bar. You can now create a Sphere News account, upload a profile picture, add a bio and your social links, and comment on new Sphere News articles (starting with this one!).
We’re also trialling an expansion into a new social platform – Tumblr – which now joins X, Bluesky, and Discord as places you can stay up to date with new content and articles.
As with any new features, these are in an experimental phase. They may come with bugs or unexpected issues, so please report these if you see them, and be aware that trial features may be removed at a later date if deemed unsuccessful.
The Sphere News team, and getting involved
This year we’ve been able to publish at least one piece of content (usually multiple) almost every week. That wouldn’t be possible without our wonderful team of volunteers. I’d love to give a massive shoutout to our current core team – Bluekwyrm, Rhubarb, CosmicMess and hoboogieman – for all their contributions and help in keeping Sphere News running – as well as this year’s guest writers – Gheorghe Vlad Stefan, ZombieDwarf, Taura Kay and Charlotte Riggs – for supporting us with extra content. Together they’ve conducted fascinating interviews and research, written amazing articles, helped keep a constant stream of news coming into our newsroom, and helped so much behind-the-scenes in turning that into content for you all to enjoy.
If you love what we do and are interested in being part of Sphere News, we’re always on the lookout for volunteers who are keen to share cool things with the wider Minecraft community. Applications for our core staff team are open here, so whether you’re keen on researching, writing, social media, in-game photography, or even have a completely new idea for how you could help us out, we’d love to hear from you. The application form and system have been refreshed for 2026, and previously unsuccessful applicants are welcome to re-apply if they wish.
If you don’t want (or aren’t accepted for) a core role, but would be interested in writing one-off or occasional articles, you can also use this form for applying as a guest writer. We’re open to submissions of already-written articles (including those that have already been published elsewhere), or pitches for article ideas you’d like to write if they get approved. That could be a news story, an opinion piece, a tutorial / educational article, or some other form of written content about Minecraft. We’re also open to discussions with the organisers of events and projects that are already producing long-form written content and would be interested in partnering with us to share it more widely.
Thank you
Finally – and I know I’ve already said this but I’ll say it again – thank you so much for your support. I look forward to seeing where the year takes both Sphere News and the Minecraft community as a whole. Here’s to a wonderful 2026!
About The Author
Whaaaa! A comment section? That’s so cool 😀
YO this is peak
I’m excited to see what happens this year! 😀
YAYYYY 😀