SMP Minecraft Servers for 1.16
Every SMP server on the list that runs Minecraft 1.16, ranked by votes this month. Point releases count, so a server reporting 1.16.4 is listed here too.
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Clear filtersSmall worlds that have been running for years
SMP stands for survival multiplayer, but on a server list it usually means something more specific: a small, long-running world with a community that knows each other, often whitelisted or application-only. Fewer plugins, fewer resets, and far more shared history than a public server accumulates.
These are the servers where spawn was built by players over several years, where somebody runs a shop because they felt like it rather than for profit, and where a griefing incident is a community event rather than a support ticket. The application exists to keep it that way, so expect a few questions on Discord and a day of waiting.
Check how long the world has run, how many people are online at your play time, and whether a map reset is planned. A good SMP is worth writing an application for, but a dead one is very dead — read a week of the Discord before you spend an evening on the form.
The Nether Update, and why servers stayed on it
Version 1.16 turned the Nether from a corridor into a place. Crimson and warped forests, soul sand valleys and basalt deltas gave it biomes; piglins, hoglins, striders and zoglins gave it inhabitants you have to think about; and netherite pushed the endgame past diamond for the first time in years.
It also added bastion remnants, the respawn anchor, target blocks, lodestones and a working piglin bartering economy. For servers, 1.16.5 became a landmark release: it is one of the most stable Forge versions ever shipped, an enormous number of modpacks were built on it, and modded communities have never entirely left.
On a plugin server, 1.16 in a listing today often means the oldest client the network lets in through ViaVersion rather than the jar it actually runs. Those are not the same thing, and it is worth asking which one is meant before you change your launcher profile. Either way the world still generates the old way, with a bedrock floor at Y=0 and none of the deepslate or large cave systems that arrived a year later, so diamond hunting follows the depths people learned before Caves & Cliffs.