Realms

Minecraft Realms is an official subscription-based server hosting service that allows players to create and manage their own private Minecraft servers. Hosted by Mojang, Realms provides an easy and fast way to create servers and allows the owner to manage them from inside the game, without prior knowledge of the concepts for hosting on the Internet. Realms are not intended for large public servers, but for groups of friends or as a family server.

Requirements
Realms is a service that can only be used by players that meet these requirements :


 * You must have a Mojang account
 * You must have a premium copy of Minecraft
 * You must have a working internet connection
 * You must be age 13 years or older to join the Minecraft Realms community

Subscriptions

 * Manage your Realms subscriptions here.

Realms is a subscription-based service. The link above will take you to your Mojang account page and will allow you to extend a current Realm or buy a new one ($8 per month as of 2016).

There are two types of subscriptions: Auto-renew and manual-renew. Auto-renew subscriptions automatically renew the Realms subscription every 30 days without you having to do a thing (this can be canceled). Manual-renew subscriptions need to be renewed manually and come in 30-day, 90-day, and 180-day packages.

All players are able to have a 30-day free Realms trial, providing they have not had a free trial on their Mojang account before.

Available maps & templates
Within the realms service users can elect to temporarily replace their regular world for a "minigame" or permanently replace their regular world with a map template or adventure map. You also cannot use most of the commands or options while your realm is using a preset minigame.

Minigames

 * Pizzaspleef by SethBling
 * Bloxorz by Jespertheend
 * Diamond Defender by Xisuma and Eease
 * Knockback Madness by AKAMc
 * Missile Wars by SethBling & Cubehamster
 * Color Cube by MaxSizeIs & nickfalme20 (Musclecraft)
 * Solitaire by JesperTheEnd
 * TNT Run by K1ll1er, Huntondoom, Quazymoodo, and ChrisBambii
 * Memory Battle by K1ll1er, Huntondoom, Quazymoodo, and ImLeeRii
 * Splatter by SethBling
 * Sharks Vs Steve by Twitchnitr0
 * Point Runner by CitrioN & Xisuma
 * Zomberman by Brutec
 * Build-off Parkour by slicedlime
 * Labyrinth by samasaurus6, buckingirl4, MineyCow
 * Bubble Shooter by slicedlime
 * SunBurn Reforged by WireSegal and TheDestruc7i0n
 * CastleRise: Brother's Feud by Kanoc
 * 3D Minesweeper by TheAl_T
 * Entrapment by slicedlime

Adventure maps

 * Diversity 2 by Qmagnet
 * Random Skies by Dragnoz
 * Muk-Luk Lodge by The VoxelBox
 * The Dropper by Bigre
 * Lucid Nightmare by Farenheit
 * Monster's Portal by Matdog and Vilder50
 * UHC Blox by gerybrano
 * The Heist by Cubehamster, Wubbi and Samasaurus6
 * Wayward Wonders by m0ndi (Mini version published on Realms)
 * The Genius Machine by The VoxelBox

Survival spawns

 * Winter Stronghold by Blockworks
 * Raider's Refuge by Blockworks
 * Spindlewood by The VoxelBox
 * A Tremendous Spawn by The VoxelBox
 * Silent Ville by Springstof
 * Desert Ruins by AKAMc
 * Skylight by Springstof
 * Flower Mountain by Emoluvjd2
 * Tranquil Temple by K1ll1er, ImLeeRii & Mouldy_Burrito
 * Staalhamer by Springstof and Jaapie172

Realms version history
As of Minecraft 1.7.10, Realms has its own versioning system. Below is a changelog of all those updates:

Minecraft version history
Originally, Realms updates were tied into regular Minecraft updates, until the release of Minecraft 1.7.10. Below is a changelog of all those updates.

Availability
The following chart shows when Realms was introduced in the respective countries.

Pocket Realms
Realms for Pocket Edition were available from Alpha 0.7.1 to Alpha 0.7.6. Beta testers were randomly selected to try out Realms, however it was taken offline after a short period of time. Realms is planned to return to Pocket Edition in the later this year.

Trivia

 * The Mojang blog closing signature was signed // The Minecraft and Minecraft Realms teams instead of the usual // The Minecraft team starting with the blog Minecraft Snapshot 13w09a.