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. However, Realms are not intended for large public servers, but for groups of friends or as a family server. Private Realms servers are easy to set up and available 24/7.

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 ($13 per month as of 2014).

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, 60-day, and 180-day packages.

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.

Minigames maps

 * Pizzaspleef by SethBling
 * Bloxorz by Jespertheend
 * Diamond Defender by Xisuma & Eease
 * Knockback Madness by AKAMc
 * Missile Wars by SethBling & Cubehamster
 * Color Cube by MaxSizeIs & nickfalme20 (Musclecraft)
 * TNT Run by K1ll1er, Huntondoom, Quazymoodo, and ChrisBambii
 * Solitaire by JesperTheEnd
 * 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

Templates / Adventure maps

 * Spellbound Caves by Vechs
 * Diversity 2 by Qmagnet
 * Winter Stronghold by Blockworks
 * Raider's Refuge by Blockworks
 * Spindlewood by The VoxelBox
 * Muk-Luk Lodge by The VoxelBox
 * A Tremendous Spawn by The VoxelBox
 * Silent Ville by Springstof
 * Desert Ruins by AKAMc
 * Random Skies by Dragnoz
 * Skylight by Springstof

Pocket Realms

 * Was avaible from 0.7.1 Alpha to 0.7.6 Alpha
 * Accesible from a button on the main menu titled 'Play on Realms'
 * Likely to return in 0.12.0 Alpha
 * Required a Mojang account
 * Beta testers were randomly selected

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.

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.