How to upload a singleplayer world to your Minecraft server

To play an existing world on your server, zip the world folder on your computer, upload it with the file manager, extract it in the server root, and set level-name in server.properties to the folder's name.

1. Find your world on your computer#

Singleplayer worlds are in the saves folder of your Minecraft directory:

Each world is a folder containing a level.dat file and a region folder. You can also open it from Minecraft: select the world, click Edit, then Open World Folder.

Close the world in Minecraft before copying it.

2. Zip the world#

Compress the world folder itself (the one that contains level.dat) into a .zip file. Uploading one zip is much faster and more reliable than uploading thousands of region files.

3. Upload and extract#

1. Stop your server.
2. Back up the current world if you want to keep it.
3. In the file manager, go to the server root (where server.properties is).
4. Upload the zip file, then extract it there.
5. Check the result: you should have a folder such as MyWorld with level.dat directly inside it. If you ended up with MyWorld/MyWorld/level.dat, move the inner folder up one level.
6. Delete the zip file to save disk space.

4. Point the server at the world#

Edit server.properties and set level-name to the folder name exactly:

level-name=MyWorld

Folder names with spaces work, but a simple name without spaces avoids mistakes. You can also rename the folder to world and leave level-name at its default.

5. Start the server#

Start the server and watch the console. If it generates a brand new world instead, level-name does not match the folder name, or level.dat is not directly inside the folder.

Paper and the Nether and End#

Singleplayer worlds keep the Nether and End inside the world folder (DIM-1 and DIM1). Paper keeps them in separate folders like MyWorld_nether and MyWorld_the_end. When Paper loads a vanilla-style world and those separate folders do not exist yet, it migrates the dimensions over on first start. Make sure no old _nether or _the_end folders are present before you start, or Paper will use those instead. See Nether and End folders on Paper vs Vanilla.

Version matters#

• Run the server on the same or a newer Minecraft version than the world was last played on. Never older.
• A modded world needs the same mods on the server, or modded blocks and items disappear.

Your singleplayer inventory#

In singleplayer, your inventory is stored in level.dat, not as a normal player file. On a server, the host player's data is not automatically used, so you may spawn with an empty inventory. Move items to a chest before uploading to be safe.

Tip: for large uploads, you can also use an SFTP client like FileZilla. See how to connect with SFTP.