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Trump threatens to deploy ICE to airports amid Homeland Security shutdown

The US president called on immigration agents to place ‘heavy emphasis’ on the arrests of Somali immigrants, a frequent target of his ire.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy federal immigration agents to the country’s airports to “do Security like no one has ever seen”.

Trump’s warning on Saturday arrived on the five-week mark of a partial government shutdown that affects the Department of Homeland Security.

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Congress missed a February 14 deadline to fund the sprawling department, which includes agencies dedicated to border security, anti-terrorism operations, immigration services and emergency management.

As a result, nearly 50,000 employees at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have been working for weeks without pay.

That has prompted some airport security agents to call in sick or quit the TSA entirely. The result has been long lines and delays at some of the country’s airports.

In his post on Truth Social, Trump blamed Democrats for the impasse and threatened to use Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to conduct airport security instead.

“If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before,” Trump wrote.

He then added that he would task the ICE agents with “the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia“.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has led a violent crackdown on immigration, legal and otherwise.

Somalis and Somali Americans have been a particular target of the Republican president’s ire. In early December, for instance, he called them “garbage” and said they “contribute nothing”.

“I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you,” Trump said at the time. “Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks. And we don’t want them in our country.”

The Republican leader revisited that sentiment in Saturday’s social media post, once again accusing Somalis of having “totally destroyed” what he called “the once Great State of Minnesota”.

Minnesota has the largest Somali American community in the US, and it is also the home state of one of Trump’s most prominent critics, Representative Ilhan Omar, who came to the US as a child refugee from Somalia.

The Midwestern state was recently the subject of a deadly immigration operation that killed two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in shootings by agents.

That violence is at the heart of the stalemate over the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the two agencies involved in the recent deaths.

Democrats have called for the Homeland Security Department to reform its immigration enforcement practices, including by implementing rules to require agents to clearly identify themselves, stop racial profiling and seek judicial warrants before entering homes.

Republicans, however, have called those demands non-starters. They have also rejected Democratic proposals to vote on funding for the TSA separately from funding for ICE and other immigration agencies.

To force Democrats to vote for Homeland Security funding, Trump has threatened not to sign any legislation that Congress passes. He has also repeatedly accused Democrats of preventing airport security agents from getting paid.

As of March 17, the TSA has reported that 366 security officers have quit their jobs.

Absences have also spiked: The TSA noted that the highest rate came at Houston Hobby International Airport on March 14, when the callout rate was 55 percent.

Industry analysts warn that the absences put increased strain on the remaining security officers, who might be more tired and less alert to threats.

It is unclear, however, how ICE agents would improve current conditions at the airport, given that they do not have the same training as TSA agents. Critics also pointed to the risk of militarised actions in civilian spaces like airports, where families and the elderly are present.

“I look forward to seeing ICE in action at our Airports,” Trump wrote in his post.

March 21, 2026
How DeFi is quietly rebuilding the fixed-income stack for institutional capital

For years, tokenization has been framed as crypto’s bridge to Wall Street. Put Treasuries onchain. Issue tokenized money market funds. Represent equities digitally. The assumption was simple: if assets move onchain, institutions will follow.

But tokenization alone was never the endgame. As we recently argued in our institutional outlook, the real institutional unlock isn’t digitizing assets – it’s financializing yield.

Following the regulatory clarity that emerged in 2025, institutional interest in digital assets has shifted from exploratory exposure to infrastructure-level participation. Surveys increasingly suggest that institutional engagement with DeFi could rise sharply over the next couple of years, while a meaningful share of allocators are exploring tokenized assets. Yet large allocators are not entering crypto solely to hold tokenized wrappers. They are entering for yield, capital efficiency, and programmable collateral. That requires a different kind of DeFi than the retail-built one in 2021.

In traditional finance, fixed-income instruments are rarely held in isolation. They are repo’d, pledged, rehypothecated, stripped, hedged and embedded into structured products. Yield is traded independently of principal, and collateral moves fluidly across markets. The plumbing matters as much as the product.

DeFi is now beginning to replicate those core functions.

A tokenized Treasury or equity is only marginally useful if it behaves like a static certificate. Institutions want tokenized assets to become functioning, working financial instruments: collateral that can be deployed, financed and risk-managed; yield that can be isolated, priced and traded; and positions that can be integrated into broader strategies without breaking compliance constraints.

That is the shift from first-order tokenization to second-order yield markets.

Early design patterns already point in this direction. Hybrid market structures are emerging in which permissioned, regulated assets can be used as collateral while borrowing is facilitated by using permissionless stablecoins. At the same time, yield trading architectures are expanding the range of activities investors can undertake with tokenized assets by separating principal exposure from the yield stream. Once the yield component of an onchain asset can be priced, traded, and composed, tokenized instruments become usable in strategies that are much closer to what allocators already run in traditional markets.

For institutions, this matters because it turns real-world assets (RWAs) from passive exposure into active portfolio tools. If yield can be traded independently, then hedging and duration management become more feasible, and structured exposures become possible without rebuilding the entire stack off-chain. Tokenization stops being a narrative and starts becoming market infrastructure.

However, yield infrastructure alone will not bring institutional scale. Institutional constraints that shaped traditional markets have not disappeared; they are being translated into code.

One of the most important constraints is confidentiality. Public blockchains expose balances, positions, and transaction flows in ways that conflict with how professional capital operates. Visible liquidation levels invite predatory strategies, public trade history reveals positioning, and treasury management becomes transparent to competitors. For institutions accustomed to controlled disclosure and information asymmetry, these are not philosophical objections – they are operational risks.

Historically, privacy in crypto has been treated as a regulatory liability. What is emerging instead is privacy as compliance-enabling infrastructure.

Zero-knowledge systems can prove transactions are valid without revealing sensitive details. Selective disclosure mechanisms can enable institutions to share limited visibility with auditors, regulators, or tax authorities without disclosing the entire balance sheet. Proof systems can demonstrate that funds are not linked to sanctioned or illicit sources without disclosing broader transaction history. Even approaches such as fully homomorphic encryption point toward a future in which certain kinds of computation can occur on encrypted data, widening the set of financial actions that can be performed privately while retaining verifiability where required.

This is not ‘privacy as opacity’. It is programmable confidentiality, and it more closely resembles established market structures, such as confidential brokerage workflows or regulated dark pools, than it does anonymous shadow finance. For institutions, that distinction is the difference between a system that is unusable and one that can be deployed at scale.

A second constraint is compliance. Regulatory clarity has reduced existential uncertainty, but it has also raised expectations. Institutional capital demands eligibility controls, identity verification, sanctions screening, auditability and clear operational regimes. If the next phase of DeFi is going to intermediate real-world value at scale, compliance cannot remain an afterthought bolted onto a permissionless system. It has to be embedded into market design.

That is why one of the most important patterns emerging in institutional DeFi is a hybrid architecture combining permissioned collateral with permissionless liquidity. Tokenized RWAs can be restricted at the smart contract level to approved participants, while borrowing can occur via widely used stablecoins and open liquidity pools. Identity and eligibility checks can be automated. Asset provenance and valuation constraints can be enforced. Audit trails can be produced without forcing every operational detail into public view.

This approach resolves a long-standing tension. Institutions can deploy regulated assets into DeFi without compromising core requirements around custody, investor protection and sanctions compliance, while still benefiting from the liquidity and composability that made DeFi powerful in the first place.

Taken together, these shifts point to a broader reality where DeFi is not simply attracting institutional capital; it is, in fact, being reshaped by institutional constraints. The dominant narrative in crypto still centers on retail cycles and token volatility, but beneath that surface, protocol design is evolving toward a more familiar destination – a fixed-income stack where collateral moves, yield trades and compliance is operationalized.

Tokenization was phase one because it proved assets could live onchain. Phase two is about making those assets behave like real financial instruments, with yield markets and risk controls that institutions recognize. When that transition matures, the conversation shifts from crypto adoption to capital markets migration.

That shift is already underway.

March 21, 2026
Grayscale wants to bring the world’s hottest crypto trading frenzy to your brokerage account

Grayscale has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a new exchange-traded fund for the $HYPE token, amid the surging popularity of decentralized exchange Hyperliquid.

The Crypto asset manager’s proposed fund would hold the $HYPE token and be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker GHYP, according to the S-1 registration statement.

Grayscale said it may stake some holdings in the future, though it cannot do so now. The filing doesn’t disclose a proposed fee. Other asset managers that have also filed for $HYPE ETFs include Bitwise and 21Shares, which already operate a $HYPE exchange-traded product in Europe with a 2.5% total expense ratio.

$HYPE is the native token of the Hyperliquid network, which is home to the leading decentralized exchange of the same name. Its core layer handles perpetual futures and spot markets, while a second layer supports Ethereum-style smart contracts.

Perpetual futures contracts, or “perps,” are derivative instruments without expiration dates that allow investors to place bets on an asset’s price without owning it. Their infinite duration (perpetual futures contracts never expire, unlike traditional contracts), high-leverage options, and round-the-clock access have made them extremely popular in the crypto space.

The filing comes as Hyperliquid sees growing interest from traders betting on traditional financial assets, including oil and gold, while war rages in the Middle East. The platform has also recently added an S&P 500 perpetual contract.

In simple terms, the platform’s value proposition is not just crypto trading, but also the ability to bet on traditional assets around the clock, even when most markets are closed.

The trading frenzy has seen Hyperliquid’s weekly derivatives trading volume top $50 billion, with more than $6.5 billion being traded in the past 24 hours alone, according to DeFiLlama data.

That has helped the Hyperliquid chain dominate in revenue, which stands at $1.6 million over the last 24 hours, compared to $335,000 for BNB Chain and $192,000 for the Bitcoin blockchain, according to Artemis data.

Hyperliquid fees in the last 24 hours (Artemis)

This increased activity has captured many bullish takes from crypto investors and market observers. Recently, Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX and CIO of Maelstrom, said the platform’s strong revenue, real trading activity, and disciplined token supply could take its native token, $HYPE, to $150.

The token currently trades around $40 and has risen by 57% this year, while bitcoin fell about 20% and Ethereum’s native token, ether, fell about 28%.

March 21, 2026
Director of Nicholas Brendon’s Last Film Remembers ‘Buffy’ Star: ‘This Loss Is a Gut Punch’

The writer and director of the movie that was likely Nicholas Brendon‘s final starring film role is speaking out after the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” star’s death on Friday. Joston Ramon Theney said Brendon was “incredibly proud” of the work he did on romance drama “Yesterday Is Almost Here.”

“Nicholas was the heart of our upcoming film, and his loss is felt profoundly by everyone who had the privilege of working alongside him,” said Theney.

The production was held for release so Nicky could “fully recover from his initial surgery,” said Theney. But after a one-week run at the Look Theater in Monrovia, Calif., the roadshow rollout was paused again after complications from his second surgery, Theney explained.

Brendon underwent knee surgery in November 2025 and spinal fusion surgery in April of that year, according to his Facebook page. He also suffered a serious fall in 2021 and was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect in 2022.

“Now, in the wake of his passing, we find ourselves navigating both a profound loss and an uncertain path forward. Nicky was not only the heart of this film but central to how we hoped to bring it to the world,” said Theney.

“Yesterday Is Almost Here”

Jackie Moore, Shoshana Wilder and Philip Andre Botello co-star in the drama about a writer who suspects his wife of having an affair.

“Nicky gave an extraordinary performance — one marked by depth, honesty, and the kind of presence that reminds you why he was so beloved as an actor. He believed in this film, and in many ways, it stands as a testament to his resilience, his growth, and his enduring talent. He is deeply missed. This loss is a gut punch. But we remain committed to honoring his legacy by ensuring his work is seen and remembered,” Theney said.

“This project represented something truly meaningful to Nicholas. He approached the role with passion, humility, and a renewed sense of purpose. He often spoke about how much this film meant to him — not only as a creative endeavor, but as a personal milestone. It was, in many ways, his comeback, and he embraced it fully.”

Brendon had some well-publicized legal and personal issues over the years, some as recently as last week. However, Theney said, “On set, he was focused, generous, and committed to giving his very best. Off set, he was warm, reflective, and deeply appreciative of the opportunity to tell this story. Nicholas gave this film everything he had, and we are proud to share that with the world.”

Brendon had roles in several indie productions in the last few years, including “Christmas Slasher” and “On a Dark and Bloody Ground.”

Watch the trailer for “Yesterday Is Almost Here” below:

March 21, 2026
Minecraft World to Open at UK Theme Park in 2027; Microsoft Gaming, Merlin Entertainments Execs Reveal First Details on $70 Million Project

Theme park lovers who yearn for the mines will have their wish granted in 2027 with the debut of Minecraft World.

A $70 million project opening within Chessington World Adventures in the UK from Microsoft-owned “Minecraft” maker Mojang Studios and theme park giant Merlin Entertainments (the owner of the Legoland theme parks), the attraction will mark the first-ever theme park based on the popular building video game.

Per the two companies’ description for Minecraft World at Chessington, which is accessible from London by a 35-minute direct train ride, “Inspired by the game’s most iconic biomes, mobs, and items, Minecraft World will bring the best-selling game of all time into the physical world for the very first time at a major theme park. The land will feature new Minecraft-themed attractions, including a thrilling world first coaster, interactive adventures, epic block built playscapes, and themed retail and dining.”

Ahead of announcing the Minecraft World news during the Minecraft LIVE presentation Saturday, Microsoft Gaming’s head of Mojang Studios and franchise development Kayleen Walters and Merlin Entertainments’ senior vice president of global brand marketing Angela Jobson broke down their new partnership in an interview with Variety.

First off, the execs clarified that Minecraft World isn’t going to be a theme-park adaptation of the blockbusters hit “A Minecraft Movie” — or its upcoming 2027 sequel — brought into real life. It’s going to be based on how you play the game “Minecraft.”

“When a player joins ‘Minecraft’ and plays, it’s their own completely new experience,” Walters said. “They have the agency, they choose how to play. So every time you hit play, it’s a different experience for you, and that’s how we think about broadening beyond the game, too. We want the players to have the agency; we want our fans and our community to have the agency and the experience. So we’ve been thinking about immersive experiences in its own space, not in the movie IP space. This is really its own unique Minecraft experience.”

Walters continued: “So they haven’t taken the sets from the movie or that sort of thing. But what the Merlin team did so well is they worked really closely with the Mojang creative team, and they designed together, and they actually designed using the game, too, which was really great. So they would actually think about what it would look like in game, and then what that player mode is like in real life. And so I think what you’ll really discover is a unique, immersive experience that brings to life what you would want to see if you were to actually get to step into a real ‘Minecraft’ world and get to experience the gravity and the physics and the smell of the different biomes.”

Jobson says Mojang and Merlin Entertainments see the need for Minecraft World to balance between “commitment to delivering real emotion and making it really believable” and “this sense of epicness.”

“There are some features in that land that I’m still not quite sure how we’re even doing it from an engineering perspective,” Jobson said. “There’s a giant floating island in the middle of it, and that we held on to from one of our initial visuals. And sometimes you go really big with your creative vision, but somehow we put our arms around it. I’ll never know. But we all believe that we really need to have this feature in it. It’s going to look quite spectacular.”

Jobson notes that along with the world’s first “Minecraft” rollercoaster and the world’s biggest “Minecraft” retail store, the park will have “Minecraft”-themed dining, “which has led to some very interesting conversations.” “Like, what can you eat? What do you want to eat from the Minecraft world? Because clearly, we want it to be appetizing,” Jobson said.

Walters says following the massive success of 2025’s “A Minecraft Movie,” it was clear to Microsoft Gaming “how excited people were just to be engaging in a different way with what they know and love within ‘Minecraft,’” and that response inspired the collaboration on Minecraft World.

“The natural evolution is to make in-real-life immersive experiences,” Walters said. “And I think it’s going to be really successful. Just that idea of sharing what you play every day with people who don’t play every day, but know it’s really important to you, and now they can bring their whole family or their friends to see what ‘Minecraft’ is like in real life. And I think it’ll get people understanding more around what ‘Minecraft’ is, and will bring people into the game even more. There is that kind of connected ecosystem where we engage in it in one way and it reminds you about a world you built five years ago that you might want to play again, so it brings players back into the game.”

Mojang and Merlin Entertainments note the project will also include collaboration with “a selection of iconic ‘Minecraft’ creators to help bring the universe to life in the most authentic way possible for the game’s global community of fans.”

See below for images of the Minecraft World concept art provided by Merlin Entertainment and Microsoft.

Merlin Entertainment

March 21, 2026
A Minecraft theme park will open in London in 2027

The best-selling game of all time is moving from the virtual to the physical. Minecraft World, a permanent Greater London theme park based on the game, is scheduled to open in 2027. The announcement came during Minecraft Live 2026.

It will be a new section in Chessington World of Adventures, a theme park with a built-in zoo. The resort is a 35-minute train ride from London’s Waterloo station.

Details are still fairly light on the park. But we know it will include a roller coaster, “interactive adventures” and “epic block-built playscapes.” Torfi Frans Ólafsson, the game franchise’s creative director, said they’re aiming for “an experience that feels immersive, authentic and welcoming.” Naturally, that will include welcoming you to open your wallet in Minecraft-themed retail and dining spots.

The park is a collaboration between Mojang Studios and Merlin Entertainments, the world’s second-largest theme park builder. (A certain rodent-led empire is first.)

If visiting the full theme park in England isn’t your thing, the latest location of the game’s (also real-world) pop-up events will open in May. Minecraft Experience: Moonlight Trail will let visitors in Buenos Aires, Argentina, go on an hour-long outdoor nighttime adventure. As its name suggests, you’ll “walk a moonlit trail” through iconic Minecraft biomes. Along the way, you’ll craft gear, mine diamonds, battle mobs and “help restore an ancient beacon.” The event opens in May.

The game’s next big drop, Tiny Takeover, arrives on Tuesday. (Mojang Studios)

Not all of Minecraft Live’s announcements were about real-world empire building. Minecraft, the game, is getting some updates, too. Its next big drop, Tiny Takeover, will live up to the billing with a redesigned “cuter” look for baby mobs. The update will also add a golden dandelion, which you can feed to a baby mob to make it stay young forever. (Or, at least until you feed it a second one.) Tiny Takeover arrives on March 24.

Mojang also teased the next drop after that. Later this year, Chaos Cubed will add a sulfur cube that changes properties when absorbing different materials. “There is a lot of variety in what the cube can do,” Mojang promises. “Just like there are balls with different ‘bounciness’ and behavior, the sulfur cube can have different physics.”

Finally, the long-rumored Minecraft Dungeons II game is official. We’re still extremely light on details about the sequel to the 2020 spinoff, aside from the fact that you can wishlist it on March 21.

March 21, 2026
Tom Lee-backed Eightco doubles down on OpenAI as total stake hits $90 million

Eightco Holdings ($ORBS), a Nasdaq-listed company backed by Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee, is deepening its bet on OpenAI. The company said Friday it had made an additional $40 million commitment, taking its total stake to $90 million.

Eightco (NASDAQ: $ORBS) Invests Additional $40 Million into OpenAI, Bringing Total OpenAI Investment to $90 Millionhttps://t.co/0oJC0E71gx pic.twitter.com/5MKbhM6k7K

— Eightco Holdings, Inc. (@Eightcoholdings) March 20, 2026

The stake now makes up about 30% of Eightco’s total treasury. The company also backs Beast Industries, the media enterprise led by YouTube creator MrBeast.

Eightco CEO Kevin O’Donnell called the OpenAI investment “a transformative opportunity” for both the company and its shareholders, adding that it gives retail investors access to one of the world’s most important AI companies.

“This investment highlights our continued belief in the long-term impact of artificial intelligence and positions $ORBS at the forefront of innovation as this technology reshapes industries globally,” O’Donnell stated.

OpenAI recently closed a record $110 billion private funding round, with participation from Amazon, NVIDIA, and a group of sovereign wealth funds. That round pushed its implied valuation to $730 billion.

The company surpassed $20 billion in annual revenue as of January 2026, more than tripling the roughly $6 billion it generated in 2024.

Eightco’s investment was disclosed alongside two board-level appointments.

Lee will join Eightco’s board of directors, while Brett Winton, chief futurist at Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, has been named an advisor to the board.

In addition to its OpenAI position, Eightco maintains holdings of 277 million $WLD, 11,068 ETH, and $76 million in cash and stablecoins.

The $WLD position makes Eightco by far the largest publicly traded holder in the Worldcoin ecosystem, a digital identity and crypto project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

The token has lost approximately 97% of its value from an all-time high of $11.7, per CoinGecko.

$ORBS shares fell 4% to $0.90 intraday, according to Yahoo Finance, and are down about 46% year-to-date. The decline comes despite a surge in trading volumes following multiple funding announcements.

OpenAI readies IPO

OpenAI is preparing for a potential IPO as early as the fourth quarter, while sharpening its focus on enterprise growth and high-productivity use cases for ChatGPT.

At a recent all-hands meeting, Applications CEO Fidji Simo told employees the company is “orienting aggressively” toward business use, aiming to convert its 900 million weekly users into more intensive, high-compute customers.

The company is also building out its finance team and refining spending plans, targeting about $600 billion in compute investment by 2030 alongside projected revenue of more than $280 billion.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

March 21, 2026
Will the XRP Price Drop Further From Here? Here’s the Forecast

Crypto analyst Joao Wedson, in his assessment of $XRP price movements, indicated that the market may not have fully bottomed out yet. According to Wedson, current data suggests that a further short-term pullback for $XRP is possible.

In his analysis, Wedson particularly highlighted the “number of days in profit” metric. This indicator provides important clues about the market’s maturity level by measuring when the current price was last compared to higher levels in the past.

According to the analyst, historically, this metric reaches much higher levels during periods when market bottoms are formed. However, currently, $XRP appears to be remaining below these critical thresholds. This indicates that the market has not yet reached a level of maturity similar to the bottom structure seen in previous cycles.

Based on this data, Wedson states that $XRP either needs to spend more time or experience a further decline to form a healthier bottom structure. The analyst adds that the current outlook does not yet fully confirm classic bottom signals.

*This is not investment advice.

March 21, 2026
Box Office: ‘Project Hail Mary’ Rocketing to Gravity-Defying $77 Million-Plus Opening

Filmmaking duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s golden touch continues with space epic Hail Project Mary, starring Ryan Gosling.

Friday’s opening-day gross of $33.1 million, including $12 million in previews, puts the film on course for a better-than-expected domestic opening of $77 million-plus, according to Amazon MGM Studios.

Only three non-sequel, non-franchise films have opened above $50 million in the post-pandemic era; Oppenheimer, F1: The Movie and It End With Us. And only two, Oppenheimer and It, crossed $70 million. In terms of the genre itself, Project Hail Mary would share rarefied air with Interstellar’s opening in 2014.

Project Hail Mary was looking at a debut of $50 million-plus heading into the weekend.

Critics and audiences are embracing the warm-hearted, adventure-action movie in almost equal measure, which is the sweet spot for every studio. And it certainly doesn’t hurt to have screenwriter Drew Goddard back in the fold after successfully adapting another Weir novel, The Martian, for the big screen.

The movie, also starring Sandra Hüller and James Ortiz , is opening in 82 markets around the globe timed to its U.S. launch, including the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Korea, Japan, and China.

Among the weekend’s other wide releases to watch is Searchlight Pictures’ horror Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. The film, directed by filmmaking duo Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett), stars Samara Weaving reprising her role as the fan-favorite, Grace.

The horror-comedy is looking at a fourth-place with an estimated $9 million.

Internationally, the film also opens in territories including the UK, Australia and Brazil, along with additional smaller markets. It will be open almost everywhere by mid-April. Among holdovers, Pixar and Disney’s Hoppers is holding firmly at No. 2.

This story was originally published March 20 10:39 a.m.

March 21, 2026
A ‘Minecraft’ Theme Park Is in the Works

Merlin Entertainments and Mojang Studios are going to need a ton of solid blocks for this one.

Together, the companies are building a Minecraft theme park, a $70 million construction project set to open in 2027 at Chessington World of Adventures in Greater London. Minecraft World will feature Minecraft-themed attractions, including a roller coaster, interactive adventures, block-built playscapes and, of course, themed retail and dining.

A “selection of iconic Minecraft creators” will consult on the build, the companies said on Saturday during the Minecraft Live event.

“We’re absolutely thrilled to be bringing Minecraft’s creativity, bold adventures, and ridiculous fun to life at a theme park for the first time at Chessington World of Adventures,” Angela Jobson, senior vice president of global brand for Merlin Entertainments, said in a statement. “Minecraft World will allow friends and families to play, explore and craft together on a truly epic scale. Working closely together with Mojang Studios, we are meticulously creating an authentic world that the global community of Minecraft fans will want to immerse themselves in and experience the game in a whole new way.”

Chessington World of Adventures, a 35-minute direct train ride from London Waterloo, is Britain’s biggest wildlife theme park, featuring rides, a zoo, an aquarium and two hotels.

“Minecraft World represents a meaningful milestone in our ongoing journey to expand the Minecraft universe,” Torfi Frans Ólafsson, senior creative director of entertainment at Minecraft, said. “We’re thrilled to have partnered with Merlin Entertainments to realize a place where you can literally be in the Minecraft Overworld and have an adventure of your own with your family and friends. The team at Merlin Entertainments and Mojang have worked hard to craft an experience that feels immersive, authentic and welcoming, and we can’t wait for our community to experience it.”

Mojang is the developer of Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. Merlin Entertainments is the theme park company behind Legoland.

In 2025, Minecraft was adapted for the big screen with A Minecraft Movie, which went on to gross nearly a billion dollars at the box office.

March 21, 2026