The portal-shaped frame at the center of Minecraft’s ancient cities still cannot be opened as of October 2026. The game has no mechanic for it. Minecraft Dungeons II, released on September 29, 2026, shows the same frame as a working gate to another dimension called the Sift. The gate opens with music, and on the other side lives a creature whose development codename was Healthy Warden.
The frame in Minecraft’s ancient cities
Ancient cities arrived in Minecraft 1.19 in 2022. They sit in the Deep Dark biome, and wardens spawn there. At the center of each city stands a frame shaped like a portal. It is made of reinforced deepslate, which cannot be mined in Survival.
According to the Minecraft Wiki, the center structure also uses soul fire, soul sand and soul lanterns. Under the frame there is a hidden room. Making a vibration in front of the frame triggers a sculk sensor that opens the door. In one variant of the structure, only eating or drinking (vibration frequency 8) opens it.
Minecraft Java and Bedrock have no way to activate the frame itself. Lighting it like a Nether portal does nothing.
In Dungeons II it really is a gate
Dungeons II has the same frame in its ancient city, and there it works as the Deep Dark portal, also called the Ancient Portal. The Minecraft Wiki lays out the steps like this.
- Defeat the Twisted Warden at the end of the Deep Dark
- Inspect the note block machine of eight note blocks in front of the portal
- Collect the three missing note blocks from around the Overworld
- The echo golems play the machine, and the melody opens the portal
The gate leads to the Sift, a dimension separate from the Overworld, the Nether and the End. Mojang revealed at Minecraft LIVE in March 2026 that the ancient city frame is a gate to a new dimension. From September 24, ahead of launch, Minecraft’s own title screen showed an ancient city in the background.
The Singer on the other side
The first area of the Sift is Singer’s Meadow, and the Singer lives right by the gate. Here is what the Minecraft Wiki says about it.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Development codename | Healthy Warden |
| Behavior | Passive. Communicates only through song |
| What its song does | Calms wardens. Opens the Deep Dark portal |
| What it made | The echo golems (codename Caretaker Golem) |
| Link to souls | Draws souls with its song and shapes them into soul blocks |
Only one Singer appears in the game. In the novel The Rift, an echo golem speaks of Singers in the plural. The wiki also points out that the Singer closely resembles the figure on Minecraft’s Mourner Pottery Sherd, added in 1.20 in 2023 and found in cold ocean ruins.
Healthy sculk and diseased sculk
The Minecraft Wiki’s sculk page says sculk originally comes from the Sift, and that there are two kinds.
| Kind | Color | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Healthy sculk | Salmon pink | The Sift |
| Diseased sculk | Dark teal | The Overworld’s Deep Dark, around rifts |
The dark teal sculk everyone knows from Minecraft is the diseased kind. The wiki’s Sift page says the disease started in the Sift. Healthy sculk still covers the Sift. The ground of Singer’s Meadow is made of it.
Minecraft itself has a few details that point the same way. The warden carries souls in its chest, which make a heartbeat-like sound. In January 2022, Mojang developer Brandon Pearce posted that the souls in its chest were very important to the warden’s lore. One early warden prototype was a creature called the Stalker. The wiki says the Stalker was reused in Dungeons II as an enemy of the Sift.
Theory 1: is the warden a diseased Singer?
From here on this is our reading.
We think the warden may be what a Singer becomes when the sculk disease takes it. Five details support that.
- The Singer’s development codename is Healthy Warden
- Sculk comes in a healthy kind and a diseased kind, and the disease started in the Sift
- The Singer’s song calms wardens, which reads like soothing a sick relative
- In Dungeons II’s lore, old stories say the wardens were the protectors of the ancient city (per the wiki)
- Minecraft’s warden carries souls in its chest, and the Singer is a gatherer of souls
There is evidence the other way too. A codename is a working label from development, not something the story states. We found nothing on the wiki where the game spells out a link between the Singer and the warden. In Dungeons II the warden is an ordinary enemy. The giant Twisted Warden is described as a warden affected by souls, which is a separate thing from the disease.
The circumstantial case is strong, but there is no proof. The test will be whether the Singer and the warden are connected when the Sift comes to Minecraft.
Theory 2: who built the ancient cities?
This is also our reading.
In Dungeons II’s lore, the ancient city was home to a forgotten civilization. A gate to the Sift stands at its center, and in Minecraft that gate is surrounded by soul fire and soul sand. The Sift is a dimension where souls gather.
That suggests the ancient cities may have been gate cities, built for travel to and from the Sift. A gate that opens with music sitting next to traps that react to vibrations fits a civilization built around sound. If the disease came through the gate from the Sift, it would explain both why the cities fell and why only the wardens, their protectors, remain.
The Singer-like figure on the Mourner Pottery Sherd supports this. It would mean people on the surface once knew what a Singer looked like. Whether the sherd was drawn to resemble the Singer on purpose is not known.
Does the ancient city portal open in Minecraft?
Not in Minecraft Java or Bedrock as of October 4, 2026.
Mojang has announced that the Sift will come to Minecraft Java and Bedrock for free in 2027, after Dungeons II. It will be the first new dimension since the End. How players will reach the Sift in Minecraft has not been announced, and Mojang has not said whether the ancient city frame will be involved.
If you want a dimension beyond the Deep Dark today, mods can add one. Deeper and Darker lets you reach a new dimension called the Otherside by defeating the warden and using its heart. On Modrinth it has 15.83 million downloads, supports Fabric, Forge, NeoForge and Quilt, and covers versions up to 1.21.1 (as of October 4, 2026). It must be installed on both the client and the server, so everyone on a modded server needs it.
FAQ
- Q. Can I light the ancient city portal?
- A. No. Minecraft has no mechanic that activates the frame. Making noise in front of it can open the hidden room underneath.
- Q. When the Sift comes to Minecraft in 2027, will the ancient city lead there?
- A. That has not been announced. Dungeons II uses the ancient city gate, so it is possible, but nothing official says so.
- Q. Will the Singer be in Minecraft?
- A. As of October 4, 2026, the only Sift mob officially named for Minecraft is the blub. Nothing has been said about the Singer.
- Q. What is the difference between the warden and the Twisted Warden?
- A. The Twisted Warden is a warden that grew huge under the influence of souls. In Dungeons II it is a boss raised by the Supreme Evoker.
How the illagers used this gate is covered in the Illager High Council and the ending. The Sift’s ecology and its souls are covered in What is the Sift?.
日本語版: 古代都市のポータルの正体｜Dungeons IIで判明したSiftへの門とウォーデンの謎
Sources: Minecraft Wiki pages “Ancient City”, “Mourner Pottery Sherd”, “Warden”, “Dungeons II:Deep Dark Portal”, “Note Block Machine”, “Singer”, “Echo Golem”, “Sculk”, “The Sift”, “Ancient City” and “Twisted Warden” (checked October 2 to 4, 2026); Modrinth, “Deeper and Darker” (checked October 4, 2026).