Create a flat or superflat Minecraft world

A superflat world replaces the hills and caves of the Overworld with a flat surface made of layers. It suits creative building, practice servers and lobbies. You switch it on with two settings in server.properties, and the game only reads them when a world is created, so you point the server at a new world folder first.

Checked against Minecraft 26.3 and the server.properties documentation on minecraft.wiki, October 2026.

How it works

Two keys in server.properties decide the world:

• level-type sets the generator. minecraft:flat is Superflat. In the Config Editor this is the World type setting.
• generator-settings holds the layers, the biome and a few options as JSON. It is optional. Left as {}, you get the default flat world.

The default flat world has one layer of bedrock, two of dirt and one of grass blocks, in the plains biome. Its surface sits at Y=-60. The Nether and the End still generate as normal.

The Config Editor describes World type as the "terrain generator used when the world is first created". An existing world keeps the type it was made with. That is why the steps below also change the world folder.

Make a flat world

1. Open the Backups tab and press Create backup, so you can go back. How to create and restore backups has the steps.
2. Open the Console tab and press Stop.
3. Open the Config Editor under Content. If it says server.properties does not exist yet, press Start once, stop the server again and come back.
4. Under World, change World folder to a new name such as flatworld. The setting's help says that changing it starts a new world and leaves the old folder on disk.
5. Set World type to Superflat.
6. Press Save changes. The panel reminds you to restart the server.
7. Go to the Console and press Start. The server creates the new world.

Your old world is still in its folder. To use it again, put World folder back to its name, world by default, and set World type back to the type it had. Reset your Minecraft world and start fresh covers wiping a world for good.

Choose your own layers

For other layers, edit the generator-settings line before the new world is created, so do it between steps 6 and 7.

1. Open the File Manager and click server.properties.
2. Find the generator-settings= line and replace {} with your JSON on the same line.
3. Press Save, then start the server.

The layers list runs from the bottom of the world upwards. This is the Redstone Ready preset from the game's own data: one layer of bedrock, three of stone and 116 of sandstone, in the desert biome:

generator-settings={"biome":"minecraft:desert","features":false,"lakes":false,"layers":[{"block":"minecraft:bedrock","height":1},{"block":"minecraft:stone","height":3},{"block":"minecraft:sandstone","height":116}],"structure_overrides":[]}

Each layer has a height, the number of blocks it is thick, and a block, which is air when left out. biome sets the single biome, features decides whether the biome's features generate, and structure_overrides lists which structures may appear. The minecraft.wiki page on Superflat shows the same format with the Classic Flat preset.

The Generate structures switch in the Config Editor still applies to a flat world. Villages can generate in the default flat world, and the wiki notes that structures only appear while that switch is on.

If it still looks normal

• The world folder already existed. Choose a name you have never used.
• You edited the settings but did not restart. A restart is needed for the change to apply.
• The line has a typo. Compare it with the example, one character at a time, or set it back to {}.

For a world with no ground at all, see Create a void world on your Minecraft server. Minecraft server.properties explained lists every other setting.