Sulkan

Sulkan is a client-side Fabric mod that adds native shader support to Minecraft's Vulkan renderer.

Built on Sodium, Sulkan provides a dedicated Vulkan shader pipeline, a built-in shader pack, and support for native Sulkan shader packs. It is designed for Minecraft 26.2 and requires a Vulkan-capable GPU and driver.

Features

• Native shader rendering on Minecraft's Vulkan backend
• Built-in Sulkan Realistic shader pack
• Shadows, ambient occlusion, water, clouds, atmosphere, bloom, and FXAA
• In-game shader settings and quality controls
• Support for native Sulkan shader packs
• Vulkan 1.2 shader compilation
• Client-side Fabric mod built on Sodium

Requirements

• Minecraft Java Edition 26.2
• Fabric Loader 0.18.4 or newer
• Fabric API 0.155.0 or newer for Minecraft 26.2
• Sodium 0.9.1 or newer for Minecraft 26.2
• Java 25 or newer
• A Vulkan-capable GPU with up-to-date drivers

Sulkan is client-side only and should not be installed on a dedicated server.

Installation

1. Install Fabric for Minecraft 26.2.
2. Install the matching versions of Fabric API and Sodium.
3. Download Sulkan from Modrinth or CurseForge.
4. Place the Sulkan JAR in your client's mods folder.
5. Launch Minecraft and open Video Settings → Shaders.

The built-in Sulkan Realistic pack is included with the mod and does not need to be installed separately.

Shader packs

Sulkan uses its own native shader-pack format. External packs must include a sulkan.json manifest and can be installed as a folder or ZIP directly inside the game's shaders/ directory.

See the shader-pack documentation before creating or installing a native Sulkan pack.

Unmodified Iris and OptiFine shader packs are not supported.

Compatibility

Sulkan is designed for Minecraft's Vulkan renderer and the Fabric/Sodium stack. Mods that depend on OpenGL behavior, replace the renderer, or make direct OpenGL calls may be incompatible.

Sodium is required and is not bundled with Sulkan.

If Minecraft falls back to OpenGL, Sulkan pauses its shader effects and explains the situation on the title screen. Driver updates, GPU selection, or Vulkan support may affect whether the renderer starts successfully.

Links

• Website
• Documentation
• Shader-pack reference
• Source code
• GitHub Issues
• Discord
• Support development

Reporting issues

Before reporting a problem, test with only Fabric API, Sodium, and Sulkan installed.

Please include:

• Minecraft, Fabric Loader, Fabric API, Sodium, and Sulkan versions
• GPU and driver version
• Operating system
• Full client log or crash report
• Steps to reproduce the issue