Minecraft /summon Command: Charged Creepers and Bosses

/summon spawns an entity at a position: /summon zombie spawns a zombie on top of you, and /summon zombie ~ ~ ~5 spawns it five blocks away. Java lets you customize the mob with NBT data in curly braces. Bedrock uses spawn events and a name tag argument instead.

/summon syntax

Java Edition

/summon <entity> [<pos>] [<nbt>]

Bedrock Edition

/summon <entityType> [spawnPos] [yRot] [xRot] [spawnEvent] [nameTag]
/summon <entityType> <nameTag> [spawnPos]
/summon <entityType> [spawnPos] facing <target or x y z> [spawnEvent] [nameTag]

Position defaults to where the command runs. Use ~ for relative coordinates.

Basic examples (both editions)

/summon cow
/summon villager ~ ~ ~3
/summon lightning_bolt
/summon iron_golem ~ ~ ~

Java NBT examples

/summon creeper ~ ~ ~ {powered:true}
/summon zombie ~ ~ ~ {IsBaby:true}
/summon wolf ~ ~ ~ {CustomName:"Rex",CustomNameVisible:true}
/summon skeleton ~ ~ ~ {PersistenceRequired:true}
/summon zombie ~ ~ ~ {NoAI:true,Silent:true}

PersistenceRequired stops the mob despawning, NoAI freezes it, which is handy for decoration. Since 1.21.5, CustomName accepts a plain quoted string. On older versions, use a JSON text string like CustomName:'"Rex"'.

Bedrock spawn events and names

/summon creeper ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ minecraft:become_charged
/summon pillager ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ minecraft:spawn_as_patrol_captain
/summon zombie ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ minecraft:as_baby
/summon wolf Rex ~ ~ ~
/summon boat ~ ~ ~ 180 0

The two ~ ~ after the position are the yaw and pitch rotations; you have to fill them in before you can add a spawn event. Spawn events are defined per mob in the game’s behavior files, so not every mob has the same ones.

Bosses

/summon wither
/summon ender_dragon

The Wither summoned this way acts exactly like one built from skulls, explosions included. A summoned Ender Dragon in the Overworld flies around without the End’s crystals and portal logic, and it doesn’t behave like the real fight. Test in a world you don’t care about.

Common mistakes

• Peaceful difficulty. Hostile mobs fail to summon or despawn instantly. Use /difficulty easy.
• Unloaded chunks. You can’t summon into chunks that aren’t loaded.
• Players and fishing bobbers. Neither can be summoned.
• NBT on Bedrock. Bedrock doesn’t accept {...} data. Use spawn events.
• Wrong ID. It’s zombified_piglin, mooshroom and snow_golem, not old names like zombie_pigman.

To spawn mobs around every player, wrap /summon in /execute. For items rather than mobs, use /give. A charged creeper explosion also drops mob heads, which is the main survival reason people test this. Back to the commands hub.