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PASSIVE Present since 1.14 or earlier

Snow Golem mob in Minecraft

The Snow Golem is a small helper you build from two snow blocks and a carved pumpkin. It throws snowballs at hostile mobs and leaves a trail of snow behind it. Its snowballs barely hurt anything, so it is more of a distraction and a snow machine than a real guard.

Health: 42 hearts
Behavior: Passive
Main drop: Snowball
Found in: Not in the wild

Snow Golem stats

Health: 4 2 hearts
Behavior: Passive
Main drop: Snowball
Spawns in: —
Size: 0.7 × 1.9 blocks
XP when killed: None
Speed: 0.2
Detection range: 16 blocks

// Experience drops only when a player kills it. Speeds are the game’s internal values, not blocks per second.

Where to find Snow Golem

Doesn’t spawn naturally in a biome: it comes from a structure, a spawner, a block or an event.

Snow Golem drops

Snow Golem dropsFrom the loot table · chance per kill

Snowball0–15

Also gives you

Carved PumpkinShearing100%

Health compared

Health vs other passive mobshealth points

Parrot6

Tadpole6

Chicken4

Snow Golem4

Cod3

Rabbit3

Salmon3

Snow Golem and its family

Mobs built on the same base in the game code, compared on their game values.

Mob	Health	Attack	Speed	Breathes underwater	Freeze immune
Copper Golem	12	—	0.2	✓	·
Iron Golem	100	15	0.25	·	·
Snow Golem	4	—	0.2	·	✓

Traits

Properties set in the game files.

No fall damageTakes no damage from falling.

Freeze immuneUnaffected by powder snow cold.

What you can do with Snow Golem

Items to use on it and what happens.

ShearShearsShears remove its pumpkin and show its face.

Gear and tools

Items it can wear, and items you use on it.

Use on itShears

Command

Summon a Snow Golem/summon →

/summon minecraft:snow_golem ~ ~ ~

How to build a Snow Golem

Stack two snow blocks and place a carved pumpkin or a jack o'lantern on top. The blocks turn into a Snow Golem right away. You need four snowballs for each snow block, so a single snowy biome visit is enough to build several.

What a Snow Golem does

It throws snowballs at hostile mobs nearby. The snowballs push them back but deal no damage, except to a Blaze.
It distracts enemies. A hit, even a harmless one, can draw a mob's attention away from you for a moment.
It leaves snow behind it as it walks, in any biome, as long as it survives there. That trail is the whole point of snow farms.

What hurts a Snow Golem

Snow Golems are fragile. Water and rain damage them, and so do hot biomes such as deserts, savannas, badlands and the whole Nether. Build them in cold or temperate places and keep a roof over them if you want them to last. Powder snow, on the other hand, does nothing to them.

Snow farms

Put a Snow Golem in a small enclosed space with a roof, so rain cannot reach it. As it moves around, it covers the floor with snow layers. Break them with a shovel to collect snowballs, or let a piston setup break them for you. Four of them craft back into a snow block whenever you need one.

The pumpkin head

Use shears on a Snow Golem to remove its pumpkin and reveal the face underneath. You get the carved pumpkin back. The golem keeps working without it, it just looks different.

✓ Checked in Java Edition 26.3 · updated 1 November 2026