Build a Minecraft lobby or hub server

A lobby, or hub, is a small server that players land on first and use to travel to your other servers. With us it is one of your own Minecraft servers, joined to the others on the Networks page of your dashboard. This guide builds the lobby server itself. Build a Minecraft Velocity network covers the linking step in full.

Checked against Minecraft 26.3 and Paper 26.3, October 2026.

What you need

• At least two Minecraft servers on your account. The lobby is a server of its own, and the Networks page only appears once you have two. Plans are on the Minecraft page.
• Our team sets up the proxy that joins the servers, so there is nothing to install for that part. We do not offer a ready-made lobby preset, so you set the server up yourself as below.

Set up the lobby server

1. Pick the software. In JAR Manager choose Paper if you want to add plugins from the Plugins tab later. Change your Minecraft version or mod loader covers the screen.
2. Choose a world. For a flat lobby, open the Config Editor, change World folder to a new name, set World type to Superflat, and click Save changes. The world type is used only when the world is first created. For a built hub, upload a map with World Import instead, as in Upload your singleplayer Minecraft world.
3. Set the player rules. In the Config Editor, set Default game mode to Adventure and switch Force game mode on, so players return to Adventure on every join. Adventure mode stops players breaking or placing blocks without special items. The game's own text describes it as "Same as Survival Mode, but blocks can't be added or removed", and the Minecraft Wiki adds that only items with the can_break or can_place_on components get past that. Set Difficulty to Peaceful so hostile mobs stop spawning, raise Spawn protection (blocks) to cover the whole hub, and set Player slots to match the players you expect. Click Save changes and restart.
4. Check the whitelist. Minecraft 26.3 made white-list true by default. Open the Players tab and look at the whitelist switch, because a lobby that nobody can join is no use. Turn it off for a public lobby, or add your players. Whitelist players and set operators has the steps.

Lock the lobby down with game rules

The Config Editor switches for PvP and hostile mobs write properties that Minecraft 1.21.9 and newer no longer read. Use game rules on the Console tab instead. Console commands only work while the server is running, so start it first, and run the commands in this section and the next one from there:

gamerule pvp false
gamerule spawn_monsters false
gamerule advance_time false
gamerule advance_weather false
weather clear

These stop monsters spawning and freeze the clock and the weather. Send time set day before the advance_time rule if you want the lobby fixed in daylight. On 1.21.9 and 1.21.10 the rules have older names: spawnMonsters, doDaylightCycle and doWeatherCycle in place of spawn_monsters, advance_time and advance_weather. pvp is the same on every version that has it. Change game rules lists more.

Set where players arrive

Stand where you want players to land, read your coordinates, and send:

setworldspawn 0 64 0

Replace the numbers with your own. The syntax is setworldspawn [<pos>] [<angle>]. Change the server spawn point goes into more detail.

Join the lobby to the network

1. Open Networks in your dashboard and click New network.
2. Name it and tick every server to include, the lobby among them.
3. Click Set lobby on the lobby server. If you skip this, the first server you ticked becomes the lobby.
4. Click Create network.

When the proxy is ready, the card shows your Network address. Players who join it land on the lobby. In-game, players hop between your servers with /server. Velocity's own documentation says /server on its own shows the server a player is on along with options to move to the other servers on the proxy, and /server <name> moves them.

If something goes wrong

• Players cannot join the lobby. Check the whitelist switch on the Players tab first.
• The console rejects the game rules. On 1.21.9 and 1.21.10, advance_time, advance_weather and spawn_monsters are rejected, so use the older names from the section above. On a server older than 1.21.9 the pvp and spawnMonsters rules do not exist, so use PvP and Hostile mobs in the Config Editor instead. The clock and weather rules exist there as doDaylightCycle and doWeatherCycle.
• You still see Proxy setup pending. The proxy is not live yet. The address appears on the card once it is.