Cannot connect to realm

When I attempt to load Minecraft realms in the latest release, 1.16.2, I am met with an error message that tells me I cannot play Minecraft realms on a snapshot version., but I am not on a snapshot version. I then loaded Minecraft realms on the latest snapshot 1.16.3-rc1 but I was not met with the same error message as before, I could see my list of realms but when I tried to load in I was permanently stuck at the 'Connecting to Realm Screen.'