Most cape guides call a cape "rare" or "very rare" and leave it there. We'd rather give you a number. Crafty tracks every Java Edition profile that has worn an official cape, so this list ranks each cape by how many accounts we've recorded with it. That runs from capes owned by a single person up to the one six million players share. Our crawler hasn't seen every account in existence, so treat each count as a floor. The ratios between capes are the part to pay attention to. The full gallery with 3D previews is on the capes page.
The ranking, rarest first
Rows with several capes are ties, and every cape in the row has exactly that count. The rank numbers skip ahead to make room for them.
What the numbers tell you
One cape has a single owner and another has nearly six million, and almost nothing sits between roughly 600 and 3,000. That gap splits the list into three clear tiers. The personal and staff capes at the top are as good as unique. The event capes, MINECON through Moonlight Trail, sit in the thousands. Everything from Builder down was a mass promotion and runs into the hundreds of thousands or millions.
MINECON capes are rarer than most people assume. Each convention cape is on three to seven thousand tracked accounts, which makes a 2011 cape rarer than any promotional cape by a factor of forty or more. They're also the capes most often faked with mods and most often found on sold accounts. If a "2011 attendee" account looks like it changed hands last year, check its skin history.
The list of capes you can still earn is short. Only three capes on the list are open today: Pan, which is automatic, and the two Minecraft Experience capes, which you get by attending the in-person events. Common closed on 5 May 2026, and everything else closed long before that. Mojang has reopened a cape exactly once, when the Founder's cape from MINECON Live 2019 came back in May 2025. Assume a closed cape stays closed.
The most common cape is Migrator. Pan went to everyone from May 2025, but Migrator went to every Java account bought before December 2020 that moved to a Microsoft account, and migration ran from July 2021 to September 2023. That was most of the player base, and those accounts have carried it ever since.
How to get the capes that are still open
Pan cape. You already have it. Every Java account has owned the Pan cape since 8 May 2025, including accounts bought after that date, and every Bedrock player since 1.16. You don't need to open Bedrock or claim anything. On Java, open the Minecraft Launcher, go to the Skins tab, edit your skin and pick Pan from the cape list, or do the same on your profile at minecraft.net. New accounts can take a little while before the cape shows up.
Minecraft Experience (Villager Rescue) cape. Go to Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue, the in-person event that has toured cities since Dallas in October 2024. Depending on the city, you get the code on a printed card at the end or by email after your visit. Codes have to be redeemed within 30 days of the event closing in that city.
Moonlight Trail cape. Same idea, from the outdoor night-time Moonlight Trail event. Its first run in Buenos Aires ended on 9 August 2026, and a Chile run is planned next. The code arrives by email within 72 hours of your visit, with the same 30-day redemption rule.
Every other cape in the table is closed. That includes the ones people search for most: Migrator, Menace, Purple Heart, Follower's and Common. Anyone selling a code for one of them is really selling an account, or scamming you.
How capes work in 2026
A Java account can own any number of capes and wear one at a time. You pick it on your profile page at minecraft.net or in the launcher's Skins tab. The cape shows on the player model, and on elytra it becomes the wing texture. A profile with no cape equipped shows nothing, even if it owns several. That's why some rare capes have owners who never display them.
Crafty records a cape when it sees it on a profile, so the capes page lists every account that has worn each cape, and when. Each cape's page shows the texture in 3D along with the live owner count we built this table from.
FAQ
What is the rarest Minecraft cape?
Several capes are tied with a single known owner: Millionth Customer, Prismarine, Spade, Snowman, dB, Oxeye, Blueprint and the Japanese Translator cape. Mojang gave each of them to one person as a one-off gift. Of the capes a normal player could have earned, Scrolls is the rarest with seven tracked accounts, followed by the MINECON 2011 cape.
Is the Migrator cape rare?
No. It's the most common cape in Java Edition, on nearly six million tracked accounts. Every Java account bought before December 2020 got one when it moved to a Microsoft account, and migration stayed open until September 2023. People call it rare because you can't get it anymore, but an account bought after 2020 was never eligible.
Can you still get a Minecraft cape?
Yes, three of them. Every Java account has had the Pan cape since May 2025, with nothing to claim. The Minecraft Experience and Moonlight Trail capes come with a code for attending those in-person events. The free Common cape for signing into Bedrock closed on 5 May 2026. Every other official cape is closed, and you can't buy any of them.
How does Crafty count cape owners?
We record every Java profile our crawler and our users look up, and note which capes each profile has worn. A cape's count is the number of distinct accounts seen with it. That makes it a lower bound on the real total, but the ratios hold up because the same crawl covers every cape equally.