To make a copper golem in Minecraft, place a Block of Copper and put a Carved Pumpkin or a Jack o'Lantern on top of it, pumpkin last. The block turns into a copper chest and the golem appears where the pumpkin was, ready to carry what you put in that chest to your other chests.
It works the same way in Java and Bedrock, and copper golems never spawn on their own: each one is built by a player. They arrived with the Copper Age drop on September 30, 2025 (Java 1.21.9, Bedrock 1.21.111), and the rules below, from Mojang's notes and the Minecraft Wiki, still apply in Java 26.3 and Bedrock 26.50: later updates only fixed bugs.
What you need
- A Block of Copper: nine copper ingots on a crafting table. Our crafting recipes show it, like every block of this guide, and copper ore is most common around Y 48, as our ore levels guide shows. Exposed, weathered, oxidized and waxed blocks work too: the golem and its chest take the block's oxidation stage, but never its wax, so an oxidized block gives a golem that turns into a statue within seconds.
- A Carved Pumpkin or a Jack o'Lantern: use shears on a placed pumpkin to carve it, and put a torch under a carved pumpkin on a crafting table for a jack o'lantern. Both give the same golem.
- The right order: copper first, pumpkin last. A dispenser can place the pumpkin too, and so can an enderman.
What the copper golem does
The golem sorts. When its hands are empty, it opens the nearest copper chest and takes up to 16 of the first item it finds. Then it opens the nearest chest or trapped chest: if that chest is empty or already holds the same item, it puts the items in; if not, it tries the next one.
| Rule |
Copper golem |
| Takes from |
Copper chests of any stage, waxed or not |
| Puts into |
Chests and trapped chests that are empty or hold the same item |
| Ignores |
Barrels, shulker boxes, ender chests, chest minecarts and boats, items on the ground |
| Carries |
Up to 16 of one item per trip |
| Search area |
32 blocks horizontally and 8 vertically from the golem |
| Reach |
No chest more than 1 block above the golem or 2 below |
| Patience |
Up to 10 chests per search, 3 seconds each, then 7 seconds of wandering before it tries again |
| Health |
12 (6 hearts), no fall damage |
| Drops |
1 to 3 copper ingots |
"The same item" means the same kind of item: the golem ignores durability, enchantments, custom names and what is inside shulker boxes and bundles, so every Diamond Sword counts as one kind. Use the golem with an empty hand to make it drop what it is carrying. It opens doors, except iron ones, and iron golems sometimes give it a poppy to wear on its head; shears take it off.
How to build a simple sorter, step by step
- Pick a flat room. The golem walks to each chest, so keep everything on one floor and stack chests at most two high.
- Build the golem where items will arrive. Its copper chest is your input. For more inputs, a Copper Chest is a chest surrounded by eight copper ingots.
- Line up chests within a few blocks. Single or double chests and Trapped Chests both work; barrels do not.
- Put one item in each chest to say what goes there: one cobblestone, one oak log, one iron ingot. An Item Frame on the front (sneak to place it) shows you the contents; the golem only looks inside.
- Leave a few empty chests at the far end. An empty chest takes the first item that comes and then only that item, so each new kind of item gets its own chest. Keep them farther from the copper chest than the others, because the golem tries the nearest chests first.
- Fill the copper chest. At 16 items per trip, a full copper chest is up to 108 trips. A second or third golem speeds things up, and two golems never open the same chest at once.
- Stay close. The golem stops when its area is no longer loaded.
Two things stall a sorter. An item that no chest accepts stays in the golem's hands, and it keeps searching instead of sorting the rest: give that item a chest, or make the golem drop it with an empty hand. And in Java, all potions, all tipped arrows and all suspicious stews count as one item each, while Bedrock sorts them by effect. A copper chest is still a chest, so a hopper line from a farm can fill it.
Oxidation, wax and the statue
A copper golem oxidizes like copper, through four stages: unaffected, exposed, weathered and oxidized. Each stage takes 7 hours to 7 hours 40 minutes of play (21 to 23 in-game days), so a new golem is fully oxidized after about 21 to 23 hours.
Once fully oxidized, an unwaxed golem turns into a Copper Golem Statue within seconds, in a random pose, and drops what it carries. It cannot happen while the golem is underwater or standing on a slab.
- To keep it working: use a Honeycomb on it. Wax freezes its current stage, and a waxed golem never becomes a statue. Its chest can be waxed too, into a Waxed Copper Chest.
- To remove the green: each use of an axe scrapes off one stage, after the wax if there is any. Lightning also removes a stage from an unwaxed golem.
- To bring a statue back: scrape it with an axe until no oxidation is left, then use the axe once more. It becomes a new, unoxidized golem: four uses for an oxidized statue, five if it is waxed.
The statue is also a decoration. Using it cycles four poses: standing, sitting, running and star (Bedrock needs an empty hand). A Redstone Comparator reads them as signal 1, 2, 3 and 4. It keeps the golem's name, can be waxed, and breaks with any tool, fastest with a pickaxe, without losing its pose.
For a statue right away, put the pumpkin on an Oxidized Copper block: the golem is born fully oxidized and freezes within seconds. Some abandoned camps also hold an Oxidized Copper Golem Statue: the Java 26.3 files place one in 9 of their 297 building pieces, in camps and tents from meadows to swamps. Our seed map finds the camps in your world, and our Minecraft 26.3 guide explains them.
Java and Bedrock: what differs
| What |
Java |
Bedrock |
| Building, sorting rules, oxidation, statue |
Same |
Same |
| Copper ingots dropped |
1 to 3, up to 6 with Looting III |
1 to 3, Looting has no effect |
| Potions, tipped arrows, suspicious stews |
One kind each |
Sorted by effect |
| Changing a statue's pose |
Any use |
Empty hand only |
| Seeds when you carve a pumpkin |
4 |
1 |
Bedrock also fixed a bug in 26.10, on March 24, 2026: since then, copper golems pick up spears, tridents and crossbows properly.
October: pumpkins for your golems
Every golem uses up one pumpkin. Wild pumpkin patches are rare, about one chunk in 32 according to the Minecraft Wiki, but pillager outposts and abandoned camps can have some, and the wandering trader sometimes sells one for an emerald. Plant the seeds you get when carving them, and a small farm keeps the golems coming.
In Java, Halloween adds one touch: on October 31, by your computer's clock, zombies, skeletons and their variants can spawn wearing a carved pumpkin (22.5% chance) or a jack o'lantern (2.5%).
