Java Edition 1.14

1.14, the first release of Village and Pillage, is an upcoming major update to the Java Edition with a planned release date at the beginning of 2019. It will focus mainly on villages, adding a new subset of villagers known as pillagers and redesigning village architecture to match the biome it is located in. This update will also introduce many new stairs, slabs and walls, and will update the taiga biome.

Blocks

 * Stairs
 * 14 new stairs, including stone, smooth stone, diorite, andesite, granite (and their polished variants), mossy cobblestone and smooth sandstone stairs.
 * Slabs
 * 14 new slabs, including stone, diorite, andesite, granite (and their polished variants), mossy cobblestone and smooth sandstone slabs.
 * Walls
 * 12 new walls, including diorite, andesite, granite (and their polished variants), bricks, sandstone, stone brick, cracked stone brick, and mossy stone bricks.
 * Signs
 * Now come in all different wood types.
 * The text is white instead of black.
 * Bamboo
 * Generate in bamboo forests in jungles
 * Can grow up to 16 blocks high
 * Instantly breaks when struck by a sword.
 * Can be used to craft sticks
 * Can be used as fuel, with four bamboo smelting a single item.
 * Can be placed in flower pots.
 * Can be found in shipwrecks and jungle temples.
 * Flowers
 * Cornflowers, lily of the valley and wither roses.
 * Wither roses do not generate naturally and are dropped by any mob killed by the wither that isn't undead.

Items

 * Crossbows
 * Stronger than bows, but slower to reload.
 * Will be able to be enchanted with new enchantments:
 * Multishot
 * Fires three arrows at once in different directions.
 * Quick Charge
 * Increases the reload speed.
 * Piercing
 * Projectiles pierce through enemies.
 * Can shoot firework rockets when holding the crossbow in one hand and the fireworks in the other.
 * Dyes
 * Four new dye items, brown dye, blue dye, white dye and black dye, crafted from cocoa beans, lapis lazuli, bone meal and ink sacs, respectively.
 * Suspicious stew
 * Found in shipwrecks
 * Craftable

Mobs

 * Pillagers
 * Another subset of villagers.
 * Wield crossbows.
 * Will raid, or take over, villages, killing villagers.
 * Pillager beasts
 * Large, bull-like creatures with armor and saddles.
 * Very tough. They have a chance to have 100% knockback resistence when hit.
 * Destroy crops and leaves.
 * Name is still a work in progress.
 * Pandas
 * Usually passive.
 * Spawn in bamboo forests inside jungles.
 * Eat bamboo and cake items.
 * Have varying personalities and traits.
 * Can be lazy, playful, worried, weak, or aggressive.
 * Their emotions can be read on their faces.
 * Baby pandas can sneeze, startling the parent.
 * Have a rare white and brown variant.
 * Can drop bamboo when killed.

World generation

 * Bamboo forests
 * New biome variant of jungles.
 * Contains bamboo shoots and pandas.

Command format

 * Drops items in various contexts
 * Syntax: {{cmd|drop  for advancements,   for fishing,   for loot chests,   for entity drops, and   for block drops
 * {{cmd|schedule}}
 * Schedules functions or tags to run in gametime ticks.
 * Any tag / function can be scheduled only once.
 * Calling for an already scheduled function / tag will replace the oldest record.
 * Calling for an already scheduled function / tag will replace the oldest record.

Blocks

 * Leaves
 * Now have a small chance to drop sticks.
 * Dead bush
 * Can now be used as fuel in a furnace.
 * Dispensers
 * Now shear sheep if shears are inside it.
 * Nether brick fences
 * Changed recipe to 4 brick blocks and 2 brick items.
 * Signs
 * Crafting a sign now requires the same wood type instead of a random assortment.
 * Stained glass and carpets
 * Changed recipes.

Items

 * Rabbit stew and beetroot soup
 * Recipe is now shapeless.
 * Book and quills
 * The player can now go back and edit previous positions in the (page) text, select fragments by cursor, and copy/paste.

Mobs

 * Creepers
 * Now drop records when killed by strays.

World generation

 * Most of the biome related features now have a registry and their configuration can be serialized.

Command format

 * Creative menu search box now accepts tags (starting with #).
 * Tooltip in creative search menu now lists item's tags.
 * New item model property custom_model_data, backed directly by CustomModelData integer NBT field.
 * Extended NBT path syntax.
 * New sub-commands for NBT manipulation and querying.
 * New chat component for displaying values from NBT.
 * Item lore tag now uses chat component syntax.
 * Added entity type tags. They work exactly the same as other ones (blocks, items and fluids, etc). Stored in tags\entity_types\.
 * Added a feature registry.
 * Added a registry for decorators.
 * Added a registry for carvers.
 * Added a registry for surface builders.
 * Block drops are now controlled by loot tables.
 * Time arguments in time set, time add and schedule function can now have units (t: ticks, s: seconds, d: days). Fractions are allowed as long as result is integer (for example: 0.5d).
 * Tables and pools accept functions
 * Added new loot table entry types: dynamic, tag, alternatives, sequence, group
 * Added new loot table functions: apply_bonus.
 * Added new loot table conditions: entity_present and two special modifiers: inverted and alternative.
 * Integer values can now specify random number generator (available types: constant). If omitted, defaults to uniform.
 * Loot tables have optional type, used to validate function usage (available types: empty). Using function that references data not available in given context (for example, block state in fishing table) will cause a warning.
 * New entity parameter in predicates: direct_killer_entity – allows access to projectiles, etc.

General

 * All textures have been updated.
 * Improved performance of Redstone Wire when depowering.
 * Improved performance of Fish.
 * Mobs that would spawn and then despawn from being too far away from the player the next tick no longer spawn.

Blocks

 * Scaffolding
 * Can be climbed quickly.
 * The player can build a pillar of scaffolding by just pressing on the top face of a scaffolding block.
 * The whole structure breaks when the bottom block is broken.
 * The bottom and sides have no collision detection.
 * Lectern
 * Was an idea originally scrapped from 2012.
 * Lets multiple people read a book at the same time.
 * Unique model based on the scrapped design.
 * Campfires

Items

 * Berries
 * A food item.
 * Found on berry bushes.

Mobs

 * Foxes
 * Spawn in taiga biomes.

World generation

 * Berry bushes
 * Generate in patches in taiga biomes.

Mobs

 * Villagers
 * New skins, based on career and occupying biome.
 * Improved trading.
 * Cats and ocelots
 * Cats and ocelots are being split into two separate mobs.
 * Cats are now able to spawn as strays in villages.
 * Have 8 new skins, one being chosen by the community.
 * Will bring the player "gifts".
 * Scare off phantoms.
 * Ocelots can no longer be tamed; instead, the player can gain their trust by feeding them.

World generation

 * Villages
 * Redesigned; new architecture per biome.
 * Generates in more biomes, such as snowy biomes and jungles.

General

 * A rewrite of the game's rendering engine.
 * A new background for the menu screen.
 * Not coming in the first snapshot.

Unconfirmed features
These features were mentioned during the development of 1.14 or during MINECON Earth 2018, but have not been confirmed to be added in this update.
 * Brown mooshrooms.