Owning a Server in Minecraft is really fun as you have your world where you can invite and play with your friends. But sometimes, it can be a quite hassle and annoying because you need to update your Minecraft Server to the latest version in order to keep it working properly.
Minecraft developers frequently updates the game to add new features as well as fix important bugs for its users. But players need to update their server to add new features and to keep the game to work properly, updating a server will take you a few minutes and work of course!
Also you need to update your Minecraft server frequently to keep it running properly. However, updating a Minecraft Server is quite easy and you’ll learn it in this article.
How to Update a Minecraft Server
When you update your Minecraft Server, you only need to update the application, which is a .jar or .exe file, which means your server keeps all the data, progress and settings you have.
You wouldn’t want to lose your world in which you have been working for months, right?
Here’s the step by step guide to Update your Minecraft Server without losing the world.
Step 1: Locate your Minecraft Server folder
Locate the Minecraft server folder, in this folder, you will find many files and server executable files. Now create a new folder on the desktop and name it anything as you are just using it to store files while updating.

Step 2: Move server files to a new folder
Now you’ll need to move the server files and folders to a new folder that you have just created:
- “World” folder
- “banned-ips” json file
- “ops” json file
- “server” properties file
- “usercache” json file
- “whitelist” json file.

Step 3: Delete all the remaining files in the Old Minecraft Server Folder
When you move all the files listed above, only 4 files or folders will be remaining in the Old Minecraft Server Folder:
- “log” folder
- “Backup” folder
- “eula” text document
- Server executable file
These are the files that will be replaced when you update the Minecraft Server to a new version so Delete all the remaining files.

Step 4: Download the latest Minecraft Server executable files
Now, you will need to download the Minecraft Server Executable files from the Official Minecraft website. Move the Minecraft Server executable files to your Minecraft Server Folder and runs it. Minecraft will not start but will create all the files you have just deleted.

Step 5: Change the eula file
Open the eula file with notepad and change it from “eula=false” to “eula=true” and save it. Eula stands for End user license agreement.
By changing this, it means you are agreeing to Minecraft End User License Agreement, you must do this in order to run your server.

Step 6: Copy the Old Server files back to the Minecraft Server Folder
Move back all the old Server files to the Minecraft Server Folder and replace all the new server files with the old files.

Step 7: Run your Minecraft Server
Now run the Minecraft Server using the Minecraft Executable, your Minecraft Server will start loading normally as before and open your world. If your server has Mods and plugins, do make sure to update them to the latest version as well to avoid any problems.
If you’re still didn’t understand then you can watch this video tutorial as well.
How to check your Minecraft Server Version
You can check the version of your Minecraft Server easily, to check it first you will need to copy the overworld part to your Singleplayer world folder.
After that, launch Minecraft and open the list of all the offline world. You would see the Server version of your world there. If your server is not up to date then use the above guide to update it easily.

You will need to update your Minecraft Server manually every time a new update launches as it will not automatically updates. That’s frustrating but if you didn’t update it regularly, one day your Minecraft Server will get corrupted and broken and your world will be gone!