Players of Java Edition can equip or unequip certain capes for their skin via the Minecraft Launcher or their Minecraft profile. Only a few hundred players around the world have such a cape, with some capes being owned by a single individual only. Some of the people who have those capes include Mojang staff themselves, volunteers in various programs as well as individuals whose impact was recognized by Mojang. Other less common types of capes have manually been given out by Mojang to select few members of the community throughout the years. Only a few thousand players around the world have a MINECON cape.
On May 12, 2020, Mojang disabled all unused MINECON cape links used to obtain the capes of years 2012, 2013, 20. Minecraft events from 2017 and onward are done via a livestream available to everyone and no capes are given out anymore. MINECON capes before Minecon Earth 2017 were obtained by attending or buying a ticket to the year's MINECON. The rest cannot be obtained by players through any in-game means and are therefore considerably rarer. The only capes that can be obtained on one's own, so far, in Java Edition are the migrator cape, which comes from migrating a Mojang account to a Microsoft account, and the vanilla cape, which comes from owning both Java Edition and Bedrock Edition in the same Microsoft account prior to June 6, 2022.
