How to Unban Someone in Minecraft

Minecraft keeps two ban lists. Name bans are stored in banned-players.json and are added with the ban command and removed with pardon. IP bans are stored in banned-ips.json and are added with ban-ip and removed with pardon-ip. The important detail is that pardon only clears a name ban — if a player was IP banned, you must also pardon their IP or they will still be blocked. You can run these commands from the server console, from in-game as an operator, or you can edit the JSON files directly. The banlist command shows everyone currently banned so you can confirm which list an entry is on.

The standard way to unban someone is the pardon command followed by their username. Run it from the server console without a leading slash, or in-game with a leading slash as an operator. Minecraft resolves the username to the player's account, so you do not need their UUID for a normal name ban. After it runs, the player is removed from banned-players.json immediately and can rejoin without a restart.

1. 1Open the server console (on Loafhosts, the Console tab in the LPV5 panel)
2. 2Type pardon followed by the player's username
3. 3Press Enter and confirm the unbanned message appears
4. 4Ask the player to reconnect — no restart is needed

Console output: Unbanned Notch

If you used ban-ip, the block is on the address, not the name, so pardon alone will not let the player in. Use pardon-ip with the exact IP address that was banned. You can find banned addresses with banlist ips or by opening banned-ips.json. This is also how you clear an IP ban that accidentally caught a whole household or a shared connection.

Console output: Unbanned IP 203.0.113.5

On Loafhosts you do not need to be in-game or an operator to unban — the LPV5 console runs as the server itself. Open your server in the panel, go to the Console tab, and type the pardon command without a slash. The Player Manager also lists known players and their ban state, giving you a click-driven way to ban and unban without remembering the exact command. Because the console has full server authority, this is the most reliable place to lift a ban, especially if no operator is online.

1. 1Open your server in the LPV5 panel at hub.loafhosts.com
2. 2Open the Console tab
3. 3Type pardon and the username (or pardon-ip and the address) and press Enter
4. 4Confirm the unbanned message, or use the Player Manager to unban from a list

If you are an operator on the server you can unban from the chat box. Type the pardon command with a leading slash and the username. You must already have operator status — a banned player obviously cannot run it, and a normal player without op will be told they lack permission. For IP bans, the in-game pardon-ip command works the same way. If you are not an operator and cannot become one, use the console method above instead.

When a name is misspelled, an account renamed, or the server will not start to run a command, you can edit the ban files by hand. Open the File Manager in the LPV5 panel, open banned-players.json (or banned-ips.json for IP bans), remove the JSON object for the player you want to unban, and save. Each entry is an object with the player's UUID, name, and ban details. Because the file is read into memory, run pardon afterward or restart the server so the change takes effect rather than being overwritten.

1. 1Open the File Manager in the LPV5 panel and find banned-players.json in the server root
2. 2Locate the entry for the player and delete that whole object, keeping the JSON valid
3. 3Save the file
4. 4Restart the server (or run pardon) so the in-memory ban list matches the file

For completeness, the commands you are reversing are ban and ban-ip. The ban command takes a username and an optional reason that the player sees when they try to join. The ban-ip command takes a username or a literal IP address. Use banlist at any time to review who is currently banned. Keeping bans by name rather than by IP is usually cleaner, since IP bans can catch innocent players who share a connection.

If pardon does nothing, check three things. First, permission: in-game you must be an operator, or run it from the console instead. Second, the ban type: if the player was IP banned, pardon by name will not help — use pardon-ip. Third, spelling: the username must match the banned entry, and for offline or renamed accounts you may need to clear the entry from banned-players.json by UUID instead. Run banlist to see exactly what is banned and on which list before trying again.