Minecraft Birthday Party Ideas: Cake, Games, Food and Art Projects

If your child is somewhere between 6 and 12, there's a good chance they want one thing for their birthday: Minecraft. It's by far the most popular birthday theme at this age right now. Google shows that parents in Poland search for a "Minecraft cake" many times more often than a unicorn, dinosaur or football cake.

The good news is that Minecraft is one of the easiest themes to do yourself. Everything in that world is made of squares, so cardboard, coloured paper and a bit of imagination go a long way. Below are ideas for decorations, the cake, food and games, and at the end the art projects we make with children at our Wilanów studio.

Invitations: start with a block world

Our free invitation maker has a Minecraft design. Type in your child's name, which appears on the wooden sign on the cover, along with the date, time and place. Print the finished invitation at home or send it on WhatsApp. It's free.

For a calmer moment at the party, try our free Minecraft-style colouring pages: colour by number, and a pixel picture appears.

Decorations: everything in squares

• Cardboard blocks. Shoeboxes covered in paper: a green top with brown sides is a grass block, grey is stone, light brown is planks. Stacked up, they look just like the game.
• Torches. A toilet-roll tube painted brown with squares of yellow and orange paper on top. A few on the table are plenty.
• Pixel bunting. Squares of coloured paper on a string, alternating green, brown and blue.
• A Creeper face. A green balloon or a green sheet of card plus a few black squares. It's the most recognisable thing in the whole theme.
• A checked tablecloth. Green tissue paper or a green-squared paper tablecloth turns the table into "grass" straight away.

Minecraft cake: three ideas, from the simplest

1. The grass block. A square cake with green icing on top and brown sides. Rough up the green edges with a fork so it looks like grass from the game. The simplest one, and it always lands.
2. The diamond chest. A brown cake decorated with blue jelly sweets or candies as diamonds from the mine.
3. The pixel cake. Square biscuits, chocolate squares or marshmallows laid out on top as a picture: a Creeper face, a sword or a heart.

Tip: a square cake tin is half the battle. A round cake is hard to turn into a block.

Minecraft-style food

• "Diamonds": blue jelly cut into cubes
• "TNT": red cups of juice with a white label strip
• "Dirt blocks": square chocolate brownies
• Pixel sandwiches: cut into neat squares, with cucumber as "grass"
• "Gold": popcorn or yellow sweets in bowls

Minecraft party games

1. Diamond mine. Hide blue glass gems or beads in a tub of kinetic sand or rice. The children "dig" with spoons, and whoever finds the most wins.
2. Creeper bowling. Cans or bottles wrapped in green card with a Creeper face. Bowl with a soft ball.
3. Speed build. Each team gets a pile of cardboard blocks and five minutes to build a tower or a house. The tallest or best-looking build wins.
4. Pixel bingo. Cards with pictures from the game: a sword, a pickaxe, a pig, a chicken, a Creeper. The host draws, the children mark them off.
5. Treasure hunt. A map drawn on squared paper, with a chest of small prizes at the end.

Minecraft art projects

Minecraft is really a game about making things, so it translates beautifully into art workshops. Here are ideas that work well for 6–12 year olds:

A pixel painting on canvas

We pencil a grid onto the canvas, and the children paint the squares one by one to make a character, animal or object from the game. It teaches patience, planning and colour mixing. Every painting is different, because every child designs their own pattern.

A 3D block world

From cardboard cubes, children build their own little land on a base: a grass block, a tree, a house, a waterfall of blue paper. It's a real model to put on a shelf.

A block mask or character head

A box covered in paper squares becomes the head of a favourite character or animal. The children wear it for the rest of the party, and the photos are the best of the day.

A torch that really glows

A jar or tube covered in squares of tracing paper in fire colours, with a small LED light inside. Turn off the lights and the torches glow like in a mine.

A Minecraft-style party at our studio

If you'd rather not host it all at home, come to the Art for Kids studio at Branickiego 21A/U2 in Wilanów. At a Minecraft-style party, the children spend two hours making one of the projects above — a pixel painting, a block world or glowing torches — and each one goes home with their own piece. We choose the project and technique to suit the children's age and what the birthday child is into right now.

• 1800 zł for 2 hours and up to 10 children, +135 zł for each extra child
• all materials and aprons, and we clear up
• a Minecraft-style digital invitation for your guests
• in Polish, in English, or in both
• coffee for the grown-ups, on us

You bring the cake and snacks. See our studio parties and book a date, or call +48 792 542 039.

Looking for other ideas? Have a look at Kids' birthday party ideas by age, 5 to 12 or our list of 15 places for a kids' birthday in Warsaw.

Minecraft is a trademark of Mojang Studios. Art for Kids is not affiliated with Mojang or Microsoft — these are party ideas inspired by the game.