Each WordPress release celebrates an artist who has made an indelible mark on the world of music.

WordPress 7.1, code-named “Mary Lou,” honors pioneering jazz pianist, arranger, and composer Mary Lou Williams.

A child prodigy who began playing publicly at six, her influence and work cut across nearly every major era of jazz, moving through swing, bebop, and sacred jazz. Through all of it, she kept reinventing her own sound. In the 1940s, she turned her Harlem apartment into a nightly workshop where Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell came to trade ideas and shape bebop itself. That combination of reinvention and collaboration inspired WordPress 7.1.

Let the range of Mary Lou’s music carry you through everything 7.1 offers.

Welcome to WordPress 7.1!

WordPress 7.1 is built around how you work: navigating the admin, controlling your designs, collaborating with others, and building what you want. The admin bar now follows you across the entire admin experience, putting the tools you need within reach, whether you’re writing a post or editing your site’s design. Built-in responsive styling, added to the current show/hide options for blocks, means you can ensure your site looks exactly how you want across screen sizes, without custom CSS. A new media editor keeps the familiar Crop button entry point, and brings freeform and aspect-ratio cropping, horizontal and vertical flipping, fine-grained and snap rotation, and metadata editing into one dedicated workflow. Leave Notes anywhere in your content—no longer limited to the block level. Rich text support and @mentions make it easier to collaborate with others as you write. Two new blocks, Playlist and Tabs, as well as a new API to register your own set of icons for the Icon block, give you even more flexibility to build what you want without additional plugins. These are just the highlights! Read on to see everything WordPress 7.1 has to offer.

What’s inside

There’s a lot packed into WordPress 7.1 across new styling tools, updated media flows, added Notes functionality, and more. Some changes add new capabilities, while others refine existing tools and workflows.

Here’s a closer look at what’s new in this release, starting with the release video:

Apply responsive styles

Style your content your way, on every screen.

WordPress 7.1 brings more responsive controls directly into the Site Editor. Style how a block looks at different screen sizes from Global Styles or in individual block settings, without custom CSS. You can also preview your changes at different viewport sizes as you work, making it straightforward to build layouts that adapt to the way people browse the web.

Admin bar, now in every editor

Consistent navigation, from dashboard to editor.

The WordPress admin bar now stays with you as you move across all editors, so you always know where you are and have easy access to familiar tools. The admin bar also features some small visual updates to more fully polish the experience.

A new way to crop

One dedicated workflow for editing your images.

A new media editor modal replaces the previous inline cropping tool, bringing together freeform and aspect-ratio cropping, horizontal and vertical flipping, precise rotation control, and metadata editing together in one place. The familiar Crop button still gets you there.

Inline notes with mentions and rich text

More ways to leave feedback.

Notes now support rich text and mentions, making it easier to leave clear feedback and loop in the right people. Format your Notes with bold, italic, and code, add links, or type @ to mention a collaborator and notify them.

You can also leave a note on a specific piece of text instead of just an entire block, keep multiple conversations going on the same block, and collapse longer notes to keep the margin tidy. It’s built for the back-and-forth that happens when people review content together.

Improved media handling

Faster, more flexible image processing.

Image compression, resizing, and thumbnail generation now happen in the browser, reducing server load and producing smaller files — without hitting PHP memory limits or upload timeouts.

Media handling in 7.1 also includes native support for AVIF, HEIC, and HDR gain maps, adding native support for the image formats modern cameras and phones already produce.

Enhanced details and new blocks

WordPress 7.1 also adds two new blocks, along with more ways to customize how content looks and behaves.

Create playlists

Bring multiple audio tracks together in one playlist, with an optional waveform that gives listeners a visual sense of each track as it plays.

Customize responsive breakpoints

Block themes can now define their own mobile and tablet breakpoints in theme.json, overriding the defaults for responsive styles and block visibility.

Organize with tabs

Organize content into tabbed panels instead of showing everything at once—a cleaner way to present related information without crowding your content.

Add custom icons

Developers can extend WordPress’s icon library with their own collections, making custom icons available throughout the editor alongside the built-in library.

Set interactive styles

Give Button blocks distinct styles for hover, focus, and active states directly in the editor’s style controls. Set the styles for just one button or all buttons.

A more consistent editing experience

The post editor is now fully iframed for all themes, matching the Site Editor.

The editing canvas runs separately from the WordPress admin interface, so admin styles don’t interfere with your content. Viewport-relative units and media queries now target the editing canvas directly, so responsive layouts behave more predictably as you build. The change is mostly invisible, but the result is a more reliable and consistent editor.

Developer’s toolbox

Advanced tools for building your way.

WordPress 7.1 expands several of the APIs and tools developers use to build on WordPress, with new options for icons, automation, admin interfaces, and responsive styling.

The SVG Icon API is now a public API, allowing developers to register their own icon collections and icons and use them throughout the editor with functions such as wp_register_icon_collection(), wp_register_icon(), and wp_get_icon().

The Abilities API builds on the infrastructure introduced in WordPress 6.9 with a filterable execution lifecycle, custom validation, and shared discovery. These additions make it easier to build integrations and automation on top of WordPress, including AI-powered tooling.

A new Design System provides foundational support for theming WordPress admin interfaces, including color, roundness, and cursor styles. Developers can use semantic design tokens and the ThemeProvider React component to bring more consistency to custom admin interfaces while still feeling at home in WordPress.

Theme authors also get responsive styling and pseudo-state styling for hover, focus, focus-visible, and active states through theme.json, along with new filters for configuring the DataViews and DataForm screens that power Pages, Templates, Parts, and Patterns in the Site Editor.

Accessibility

WordPress 7.1 continues to improve accessibility across WordPress Core and the editor. New wp_get_tooltip() and wp_get_toggletip() functions bring accessible tooltips to more areas of the WordPress admin, including post meta boxes and the login screen.

Screen reader support also improves across admin interfaces, with clearer labeling and more predictable navigation in post list tables. The new Tab and Playlist blocks, along with improvements to editor navigation and interaction, add to the broader accessibility work included in this release.

Together, these changes continue to make WordPress easier to navigate and use for more people.

Performance improvements

Image compression, resizing, and thumbnail generation now run in the browser (via a WebAssembly build of libvips), reducing the processing load on your server and helping avoid memory limits and timeouts with larger uploads.

Opt-in GIF-to-video conversion produces typically smaller files, while upload progress indicators and automatic retries make uploads more resilient when connections drop.

The Media Library now uses infinite scrolling by default, with a per-user option to return to pagination. Speculative loading defaults can now be set through environment variables or constants, so hosts and site owners can configure how WordPress prefetches pages without writing a plugin.

And much more!

For a comprehensive overview of everything new and improved in WordPress 7.1, visit the feature showcase website.

Learn more about WordPress 7.1

Learn WordPress is a free resource for new and experienced WordPress users. Learn is stocked with how-to videos on using various features in WordPress, interactive workshops for exploring topics in-depth, and lesson plans for diving deep into specific areas of WordPress.

Read the WordPress 7.1 Release Notes for information on installation, enhancements, fixed issues, release contributors, learning resources, and the list of file changes.

Explore the WordPress 7.1 Field Guide. Learn about the changes in this release with detailed developer notes to help you build with WordPress.

The 7.1 release squad

Every release comes to you from a dedicated team of enthusiastic contributors who help keep things on track and moving smoothly. The team that has led 7.1 is a cross-functional group of contributors who are always ready to champion ideas, remove blockers, and resolve issues.

Thank you, contributors

The mission of WordPress is to democratize publishing and embody the freedoms that come with open source. A global and diverse community of people collaborating to strengthen the software supports this effort.

WordPress 7.1 reflects the tireless efforts and passion of more than 800 contributors from all over the world. This release also welcomed over 170 first-time contributors!

Together, their work delivered more than 1500 enhancements and fixes, helping make WordPress 7.1 a stable and polished release for everyone. It’s another great example of what the WordPress open source community can accomplish when people come together to build, test, and improve the software.

More than 20 locales have fully translated WordPress 7.1 into their language making this one of the most translated releases ever on day one. Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps make WordPress available in 200+ languages.

Last but not least, thanks to the volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users worldwide.

Get involved

Participation in WordPress goes far beyond coding. And learning more and getting involved is easy. Discover the teams that come together to Make WordPress and use this interactive tool to help you decide which is right for you.

Original source

WordPress 7.0.4 is now available

WordPress 7.0.4 is now available which features a security fix. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately.

You can update to WordPress 7.0.4 by downloading it from WordPress.org, or visiting your site’s Dashboard Updates and clicking Update Now. Sites that support automatic background updates will begin updating shortly.

For more information, please visit the WordPress 7.0.4 HelpHub site.

Security update included in this release

The security team would like to thank the team at pwn.ai for responsibly reporting the following vulnerability and allowing it to be fixed in this release:

• Authenticated Author+ remote code execution via malicious file upload on sites that use Imagick and Ghostscript.

Backports

As a courtesy, these fixes are being backported through to the 4.7 branch and the 7.1 RC3 release that’s due later today. As a reminder, only the most recent version of WordPress is actively supported. The backports are in progress and will ship as they become ready.

CVE and GHSA references

Further details can be found in the advisory: CVE-2026-65640 / GHSA-8vr3-7mxf-gx8w.

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

This release was led by John Blackbourn, with significant input from Dennis Snell and Jeremy Felt. In addition, WordPress 7.0.4 and its backports would not have been possible without the valuable contributions of the following people:

Aaron D. Campbell, Aaron Jorbin, Adam Silverstein, Aki Hamano, Alex Concha, Barry, Dennis Snell, Ehtisham Siddiqui, Jeremy Felt, John Blackbourn, Jon Surrell, Jonathan Desrosiers, Lance Willett, Marin Atanasov, Mohammad Jangda, Sergey Biryukov, vortfu, Weston Ruter, and representatives from WP Engine.

Original source

Security updates included in this release

WordPress 7.0.3 is now available which features several security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately.

You can update to WordPress 7.0.3 by downloading it from WordPress.org, or visiting your site’s Dashboard Updates and clicking Update Now. Sites that support automatic background updates will begin updating shortly.

For more information, please visit the WordPress 7.0.3 HelpHub site.

The security team would like to thank the following people for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities and allowing them to be fixed in this release:

Backports

As a courtesy, these fixes are being backported, where necessary, to all branches eligible to receive security fixes (currently through 4.7). As a reminder, only the most recent version of WordPress is actively supported. The backports are in progress and will ship as they become ready.

WordPress 7.1 RC2 has also been released, containing all applicable fixes.

CVE and GHSA references

Details of the login screen XSS vulnerability can be found in the advisory: CVE-2026-64638 / GHSA-52p2-r8wf-jcrf.

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

This release was led by John Blackbourn. In addition to the security researchers mentioned above, WordPress 7.0.3 and its backports would not have been possible without the significant contributions of the following people:

Aaron D. Campbell, Aaron Jorbin, Adam Silverstein, adrianmoldovanwp, Aki Hamano, Alex Concha, Andrew Duthie, Andrew Serong, annezazu, Barry, Bernie Reiter, Daniel, Daniel Richards, David Biňovec, Dennis Snell, Ehtisham Siddiqui, Erwan Le Rousseau, Fabian Kaegy, fiocavallari, George Mamadashvili, gubser, Isabel Brison, Jarda Snajdr, Jb Audras, Jeremy Felt, Joe Dolson, Joe Hoyle, John Blackbourn, Jon Surrell, Jonathan Desrosiers, Khokan Sardar, Lance Willett, lucasbustamante, lucatume, Marco Ciampini, Marin Atanasov, Mohammad Jangda, Mukesh Panchal, Paul Kevan, Peter Wilson, ramonopoly, SergeyBiryukov, vortfu, Weston Ruter.

Join us for the launch of WordPress 7.1 at WordCamp US 2026, August 16.

Original source

The first Release Candidate (“RC1”) for WordPress 7.1 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is still under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended to evaluate RC1 on a test server and site.

WordPress 7.1 RC1 can be tested using any of the following methods:

Plugin

Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.)

Direct Download

Download the RC1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.

Command Line

Use this WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=7.1-RC1

WordPress Playground

Use the WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup required – just click and go!

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.1 is August 19, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who contributes by testing!

Please continue checking the Make WordPress Core blog for 7.1-related posts in the coming weeks for more information.

What’s in WordPress 7.1 RC1?

WordPress 7.1 RC1 contains more than 145 updates and fixes since the Beta 4 release, including 57 in the Editor and 88 in Core.

For an overview of what’s new in WordPress 7.1, read the Beta 1 announcement and the WordPress 7.1 Dev Notes. For a comprehensive summary, see the WordPress 7.1 Field Guide.

You can also explore the technical details of all issues addressed since Beta 4 using the links below:

• GitHub commits for 7.1 since July 29, 2026
• Closed Trac tickets for 7.1 since July 29, 2026

New Features since Beta 1

• Icons API: New APIs for registering icons and icon collections in Core, ready for plugins to extend.
• Speculative loading configuration: Speculative loading defaults can now be configured via environment variables and constants.
• Email notifications for @mentions: Email notifications have been introduced when mentioned in a Note.
• Shareable Revisions: Share links to specific revisions for faster collaboration.

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? These tickets and pull requests are just some of the latest updates:

• #GB-79839: Apply globally: choose which modified block styles to apply
• #GB-80814: New responsiveEditingEnabled editor setting to hide responsive styles
• #GB-80107: Tabs: toolbar buttons to reorder tabs
• #GB-80046: DataViews: shift-click range selection
• #65636: Preload REST API requests fetched on editor load
• #65613: Notes are excluded from comment feed queries
• #65491: KSES allows the autofocus attribute on dialog elements
• #65517: Multisite upload limits are enforced when sideloading media from a URL
• #62757: Update the jQuery UI library to version 1.14.2

How you can contribute

WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

Get involved in testing

Testing for issues is crucial to the development of any software. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute.

Your help testing the WordPress 7.1 RC1 version is key to ensuring that the final release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 7.1.

Update your theme or plugin

For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 7.1 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 7.1.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Test on your hosting platforms

Web hosts provide vital infrastructure for supporting WordPress and its users. Testing on hosting systems helps inform the development process while ensuring that WordPress and hosting platforms are fully compatible, free of errors, optimized for the best possible user experience, and that updates roll out to customer sites without issue.

Want to test WordPress on your hosting system? Get started with configuring distributed hosting tests here. Thank you to all web hosts who help test WordPress!

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

An RC1 haiku

A candidate stands
the desert sun tests its strength
Arizona waits

Props to @krupajnanda, @annezazu, @amykamala, @wildworks and @masteradhoc for collaboration and review

Join us for the launch of WordPress 7.1 at WordCamp US 2026, August 16–19.

Original source

WordPress 7.1 Beta 4 is ready for download and testing!

This beta release is intended for testing and development only. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, use a test environment or local site to explore the new features.

How to Test WordPress 7.1 Beta 4

You can test WordPress 7.1 Beta 4 in any of the following ways:

WordPress Beta Tester Plugin

Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.

Direct Download

Download the Beta 4 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.

Command Line (WP-CLI)

Use this WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=7.1-beta4

WordPress Playground

Use a 7.1 Beta 4 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup required-just click and go!

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.1 is August 19, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who contributes by testing!

Find out what’s new in WordPress 7.1: Read the Beta 1 announcement for details and highlights.

How important is your testing?

Testing for issues is a critical part of developing any software, and it’s a meaningful way for anyone to contribute – whether or not you have experience. Details on what to test in WordPress 7.1 are available here.

If you encounter an issue, please share it in the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so via WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against this list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general and how to get started? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

What’s in WordPress 7.1 Beta 4?

WordPress 7.1 Beta 4 contains more than 114 updates and fixes since the Beta 3 release, including 51 in the Editor and 63 in Core.

Each beta cycle focuses on bug fixes, and more are on the way with your help through testing. You can browse the technical details for all issues addressed since Beta 3 using these links:

• GitHub commits for 7.1 since July 22, 2026
• Closed Trac tickets for 7.1 since July 22, 2026

Beta 4 brings a round of fixes that make the editor smoother to work with. Notes now stay reliably tied to the passage they refer to, and tagged people are displayed cleanly and clearly.

A Beta 4 haiku

Testers lend their eyes,
edge cases hide in plain sight—
Patch, rebuild, refine.

Props to @krupajnanda for preparing this post and @annezazu, @wildworks, @amykamala for proofreading and review.

Join us for the launch of WordPress 7.1 at WordCamp US 2026, August 16–19.

Original source

WordPress 7.1 Beta 3 is ready for download and testing!

This beta release is intended for testing and development only. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, use a test environment or local site to explore the new features.

How to Test WordPress 7.1 Beta 3

You can test WordPress 7.1 Beta 3 in any of the following ways:

WordPress Beta Tester Plugin

Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.

Direct Download

Download the Beta 3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.

Command Line (WP-CLI)

Use this WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=7.1-beta3

WordPress Playground

Use a 7.1 Beta 3 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup required-just click and go!

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.1 is August 19, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who contributes by testing!

Find out what’s new in WordPress 7.1: Read the Beta 1 announcement for details and highlights.

How important is your testing?

Testing for issues is a critical part of developing any software, and it’s a meaningful way for anyone to contribute – whether or not you have experience. Details on what to test in WordPress 7.1 are available here.

If you encounter an issue, please share it in the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so via WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against this list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general and how to get started? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

What’s in WordPress 7.1 Beta 3?

For technical details on the more than 71 issues addressed since Beta 1, see the following links:

• Closed 7.1 WordPress Core Trac tickets since July 15, 2026
• 7.1 Gutenberg commits since July 15, 2026

Note: Beta 2 was released on July 17, 2026, as part of the WordPress 7.0.2 release and includes important security fixes.

Beta 3 introduces two improvements to styling.

Applying local style changes globally is no longer an all-or-nothing action. The Apply globally option in the block inspector now opens a quick review step, allowing you to choose which modified styles to apply globally while keeping the rest as local overrides.

Other notable fixes include improvements to media uploads: long animated GIF uploads no longer hang, images rotated using EXIF metadata are processed correctly, and uploading a single HEIC image in Safari no longer creates two entries.

The editor also includes additional fixes for Notes, responsive styling, and custom CSS. For developers, WordPress Coding Standards has been updated to version 3.4.0.

Unicode email address support will not be included in WordPress 7.1. The work will continue in a community plugin, allowing broader testing of compatibility, security, and data-handling considerations.

A Beta 3 haiku

Fresh bugs surface now,
click by click, we chase them down—
codebase grows steady.

Props to @krupajnanda, @annezazu, @wildworks, @amykamala for proofreading and review.

Original source

WordPress 7.0.2 is now available.

The 7.0.2 security release addresses one critical and one high severity security issue.

Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. Due to the severity, the WordPress.org team have enabled forced updates via the auto-update system for sites running affected versions.

To manually update you can visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”, or you can download WordPress 7.0.2 from WordPress.org. On sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

Security updates included in this release

The security team would like to thank the following people for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities and allowing them to be fixed in this release:

• A facilitated SQL injection issue reported as a team by TF1T, dtro, and haongo
• A REST API batch-route confusion and SQL injection issue leading to Remote Code Execution reported by Adam Kues at Assetnote / Searchlight Cyber

For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site.

Backports

• WordPress 6.9 is affected by both vulnerabilities. Version 6.9.5 has been released containing fixes for both.
• WordPress 6.8 is only affected by the first vulnerability. Version 6.8.6 has been released containing a fix.
• The beta release of WordPress 7.1 is affected by both vulnerabilities. Version 7.1 beta2 has been released containing fixes for both.
• Versions of WordPress prior to 6.8 are not affected.

CVE and GHSA references

• CVE-2026-60137 / GHSA-fpp7-x2x2-2mjf
• CVE-2026-63030 / GHSA-ff9f-jf42-662q

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

This release was led by John Blackbourn and Barry Abrahamson. In addition to the security researchers mentioned above, WordPress 7.0.2 would not have been possible without the significant contributions of the following people: Aaron Jorbin, Alex Concha, annezazu, Barry, David Baumwald, Dominik Schilling, Ehtisham Siddiqui, Joe Dolson, Joe Hoyle, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Marius L. J., Matt Mullenweg, Mohammad Jangda, Peter Wilson, Sergey Biryukov, vortfu, Weston Ruter, plus representatives from Altis, Automattic, Bluehost, Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Hostinger, and WP Engine.

Original source

WordPress 7.1 Beta 1 is ready for download and testing!

This beta release is intended for testing and development only. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, use a test environment or local site to explore the new features.

How to Test WordPress 7.1 Beta 1

You can test WordPress 7.1 Beta 1 in any of the following ways:

WordPress Beta Tester Plugin

Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.

Direct Download

Download the Beta 1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.

Command Line (WP-CLI)

Use this WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=7.1-beta1

WordPress Playground

Use a 7.1 Beta 1 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup required-just click and go!

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.1 is August 19, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who contributes by testing!

How important is your testing?

Testing for issues is a critical part of developing any software, and it’s a meaningful way for anyone to contribute – whether or not you have experience.

Details on what to test in WordPress 7.1 are available here.

If you encounter an issue, please share it in the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so via WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against this list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general and how to get started? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

WordPress 7.1 will include new features that were previously only available in the Gutenberg plugin. Learn more about Gutenberg updates since WordPress 7.0 in the What’s New in Gutenberg posts for versions 22.7, 22.8, 22.9, 23.0, 23.1, 23.2, 23.3, 23.4, 23.5 and 23.6.

What’s new in WordPress 7.1?

WordPress 7.1 delivers a more complete set of styling controls, a smoother media experience, and a more personalized admin experience. Notes have evolved to add inline notes with @mentions and rich text formatting that make asynchronous feedback feel more powerful. New styling features unlock long requested features to style how blocks look across screen sizes and to style interactive states, all without writing custom CSS. Various client side media improvements means better format support, improved performance, and more resilient uploads when adding media to your site. A new inline cropping tool brings a fresh and more robust experience to editing images. Finally, the admin experience becomes easier to navigate with an ever present admin bar in the editors, improvements to the command palette, and various quality of life improvements. Underneath it all, developers get an expanding set of APIs to build on, and site owners get better support for a truly global audience.

New suite of Notes features

Notes continue to grow into a fuller collaboration experience, making asynchronous feedback between teams faster and more expressive.

Text Formatting: Notes now support inline formatting like bold, italic, code, links and adding emoji; each with a respective keyboard shortcut, so feedback reads clearly without breaking your flow.

@mentions: Type “@” in a Note to pull up a searchable list of collaborators and tag someone directly, so feedback points at the right person without leaving the sidebar.

Leave notes anywhere: Start more than one conversation on the same block instead of folding every comment into a single thread, making it easier to track distinct pieces of feedback.

Inline notes: Leave a note on a text selection instead of on an entire block.

Show more / show less: Long notes now collapse by default with a toggle to expand them, keeping the margin tidy while you write.

Style it your way, on any screen

WordPress 7.1 takes a major step toward built-in responsive design and interactive styling, letting you achieve looks that once required writing custom CSS.

Responsive styling: Define how a block looks at different screen sizes directly in the editor, for both Global Styles and individual blocks without the need of writing custom CSS.

Viewport breakpoint customization: Theme authors can now define their own responsive breakpoints in theme.json, giving more flexibility for how responsive controls behave on a given site.

Interactive state styling: Style how blocks respond to interaction, like a button changing color on hover or focus, using a standardized set of controls for both Global Styles and individual block instances.

A smoother media experience

Uploading, editing, and browsing media keeps getting more capable and more reliable.

• Client-side media processing: Image and media processing moves into the browser, now with broader format support that includes HEIC (the default format for iPhone photos), UltraHDR, AVIF and WebP support built in, plus GIF-to-video conversion for lighter, more efficient files. Uploads are also more resilient, with a progress indicator and automatic retries if your data connectivity drops off.
• New Media Editor Modal: A dedicated modal for editing images replaces the inline cropping tool, bringing cropping, rotation, and metadata editing together in one streamlined workflow.
• Smarter galleries: Gallery blocks can automatically pull in and sort media already attached to the current post, cutting down on manual set-up.
• View attached images: After you upload images to a post, the inserter will automatically surface them in a new Attached images section to make it easier to find relevant images.
• Infinite scrolling by default: The Media Library grid view now loads additional items automatically as you scroll, rather than requiring a click on “Load more” especially handy for sites that handle large media libraries. This can be disabled under your user profile.

A more personal, more navigable admin

These meaningful upgrades make the WordPress admin easier to move around in and more consistent with how you like to work.

• Persistent toolbar (Omnibar): The admin toolbar now travels with you into the Site Editor and Block Editor, with a series of polish improvements throughout.
• Command palette improvements: Moving through the dashboard and editor with the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd+K) is more refined to make finding what you need even faster! Now results are grouped into Recent, matching and Suggestions sections instead of one flat list.
• Admin color scheme in the Site Editor: The Site Editor now reflects your chosen admin color scheme instead of always using a fixed background.
• DataViews and DataForms iterations: Continued refinement of the components behind managing lists of posts, pages, patterns, and templates, alongside the forms used to edit them.
• Excerpts in the Posts list: The Posts list view now shows a short excerpt for each entry, making it easier to identify the post you’re looking for without opening it.
• Visual revisions: This release adds a picker activity layout for browsing history in more detail, clearly labeled autosaves in the timeline, and an autosave notice that opens straight into the visual revisions view. Global Styles revisions get a small polish too, swapping the active style’s text label for a badge.
• A dedicated Identity section: Site identity settings like your title, tagline, and icon are now live in their own clearly labeled section of the Site Editor, making them easier to find and update.
• On This Day Widget: A new widget resurfaces what you published on this date in past years, right on your dashboard. A small nudge to look back on what you’ve written, and a reason to write something new today.
• Allow Changing Comment Parent: Fixing a misthreaded comment used to mean editing the database directly. WordPress 7.1 adds an editable “In reply to” control to the Edit Comment screen, letting you pick a new parent from a dropdown of the post’s other comments. It’s scoped to the same post, so this is about untangling threads, not moving comments across posts.

New blocks and block-level enhancements

WordPress 7.1 release brings a handful of block refinements that give more control with fewer steps.

• Playlist Block: A new block for adding a collection of audio files to a post or page, with an optional waveform visualization that shows the audio’s shape as it plays; a more visual way to present podcasts, music, or audio content without using any third-party plugins.
• Tabs Block: A new block for organizing content into clickable tabbed panels instead of showing everything at once. It’s a cleaner way to present related content without overwhelming the page.
• Background gradients: Background gradients and background images no longer conflict. The gradient used to get silently overridden by the image, but now they combine and display together. This fix extends beyond the Group block to Verse, Accordion, Pullquote, Post Content, and Quote block.
• HTML block editable content: The HTML block now supports editable nested blocks. This is great to use for AI-generated content, which often arrives as raw HTML.
• “Mark as decorative” for images: A new toggle on the Image block lets you hide purely decorative images from screen readers for a better accessibility experience.
• Smarter shortcode handling: Pasting or converting a shortcode into the Embed block now creates a proper Embed block instead of leaving raw shortcode text behind, and the Shortcode block gains block-specific transforms of its own.

Built for a global audience

WordPress 7.1 continues work to make Core reflect the full diversity of its worldwide community, with progress toward supporting Unicode email addresses so usernames, slugs, and email addresses can better represent users everywhere.

Built for developers

WordPress 7.1 continues to expand the foundation developers build on.

• Abilities API expansion: Continued refinement of the Abilities API with improved querying, filtering, and input validation, giving developers and AI tooling a more reliable foundation to build on.
• Block Bindings for list items: Block Bindings now extend to List Item, making it possible to connect more block content to dynamic data sources without custom code.
• Custom icon registration: New functions let plugin and theme authors register their own icons for the Icons block for use throughout the block editor.
• Enforced iframed editor: The post editor now always runs inside an iframe, isolating the editing canvas from admin styles for more predictable rendering. Blocks using Block API v2 or lower should be updated to v3 for compatibility.
• wordpress/theme stabilization: The package theme authors use to build block themes gets an architecture and API review, laying groundwork for a more stable, and better documented theming foundation going forward.
• Connectors authentication improvements: The Connectors screen now also supports username and application-password login – a more familiar way to connect plugins and services. This release also closes a security gap where browsers could auto-suggest saved credentials into the API key field.

With so much in progress for WordPress 7.1 Beta 1, this is still only the beginning; expect continued refinement with each Beta and RC release ahead of the final release on August 19, 2026.

Just for you: a Beta 1 haiku:

Seeds of Seven-One,
Notes, styles, media, and tools—
Test, and watch them bloom.

Props to @benjamin_zekavica, @amykamala, @wildworks, @adamsilverstein, @annezazu, @fushar, @jorgefilipecosta, @joedolson for proofreading and review.

Original source

WordPress 7.0.1 is now available!

This minor release includes fixes for 31 bugs throughout Core and the Block Editor, addressing issues affecting multiple areas of WordPress including the block editor, admin ui, and media. For a full list of bug fixes, please refer to the release candidate announcement.

WordPress 7.0.1 is a short-cycle maintenance release. The next major version of WordPress will be 7.1; it is scheduled for release on 19 August 2026 at WordCamp US.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 7.0.1 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site.

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

This release was led by Aaron Jorbin, Brian Haas, Carlos Bravo, and Estela Rueda.

WordPress 7.0.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, Abdur Rahman Emon, Abhishek Kumar, Adam Silverstein, Adam Zieliński, Aditya Singh, Aki Hamano, Andrea Fercia, Andrei Draganescu, Andrew Serong, annezazu, Ben Dwyer, Brian Coords, Brian Haas, Carlos Bravo, cogdesign, Dan Luu, Daniel Richards, Darshit Rajyaguru, David Baumwald, Dennis Snell, Dhruvang21, Ella Van Durpe, Erick Wambua, Esteban, Estela Rueda, George Mamadashvili, Greg Ziółkowski, Himanshu Pathak, Hit Bhalodia, Huzaifa Al Mesbah, iflairwebtechnologies, James, Jarda Snajdr, Jb Audras, Joe Dolson, Joen Asmussen, Jon Surrell, Jonathan Desrosiers, Karthikeya Bethu, Khokan Sardar, Lucian R., luismulinari, Mahammad Darvishov, Manhar Barot, Marco Ciampini, Marin Atanasov, Maryam Sultana, Masum, Miguel Fonseca, Miroku, Mohammed Noumaan Ahamed, Mukesh Panchal, Mustafa Bharmal, Nik Tsekouras, Noruzzaman, Ozgur Sar, Peter Wilson, Presskopp, Rahul Kumar, ramonopoly, Riad Benguella, Rishabh Gupta, Roshni Ahuja, Sainath Poojary, Saksham Sharma, SAndrew, Scott Reilly, Sergey Biryukov, siliconforks, Stephen Bernhardt, Swanand M, Takashi Kitajima, Terence Eden, threadi, Tushar Patel, Umesh Nevase, WebMan Design | Oliver Juhas, Weston Ruter, Yogesh Bhutkar, Yusuf Mudagal

How to contribute

To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, choose a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core channel. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

Props to @jorbin for proofreading.

Original source

Every WordPress release celebrates an artist who has made an indelible mark on the world of music. Say Hello to WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong”, named in honor of “Satchmo” himself, jazz musician Louis Armstrong.

Known as the “first great jazz soloist”, Louis Armstrong created ensembles that highlighted his own profound trumpeting skills, and in the process, transformed jazz from an orchestral art form into a solo art form. The master trumpeter also impressed the world with his signature vocals, introducing improvisation into Jazz, influencing every artist he worked with, and permanently changing the landscape of music.

Louis Armstrong wove his personal touch into the world of Jazz. With WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong”, you can build with yours.

Welcome to WordPress 7.0!

WordPress 7.0 marks the start of a new era, laying the foundation for AI across the WordPress experience. Greeting you with a modern, more intuitive dashboard, 7.0 introduces enhanced customization and development tools that inspire creativity and tap into endless potential.
Whether you’re a creator, business owner or developer – WordPress 7.0 let’s you create in a way that is uniquely your own.

What’s inside

Explore AI abilities directly in your website, all managed from a central hub. Slide seamlessly through the sleek, new admin theme implemented across the dashboard. Ignite creative flow with new blocks and design tools, and tap into an expansive developer toolbox that gives you more control than ever, letting you create your way.

AI-Integrated WordPress

Possibilities right in your hands.

With AI integrated throughout WordPress the potential is endless. A new AI Client in Core lets WordPress communicate with generative AI models, while connections are easily managed from a single hub in the dashboard. The AI Client combined with the Abilities API makes a fiery duo that introduces new functionality, workflow automation, and creation tools to your website. Install the new AI plugin to expand your options even more: generate and edit images, create titles or excerpts, or even suggest alt text.
7.0 also includes a new Client-Side Abilities package: a Javascript counterpart to the Abilities API, with a built in UI and command palette that delivers extensive new and hybrid AI abilities.
Manage all your external connections in a central hub on the Connector’s screen. Easily dive in with 3 presets, or add your own connections. Authenticate and get started with AI abilities in just a few clicks.
An AI-integrated WordPress promises infinite potential, ready to be discovered.

Modernized Dashboard

Elevate your admin experience.

7.0 introduces a fully revitalized dashboard with a chic, modern new color scheme, and clean finishes throughout.
Polished with smooth transitions that seamlessly shift as you move between screens, you’ll feel like you’re effortlessly gliding through the dashboard.
Just one click of the new Command Palette shortcut, a ⌘K or Ctrl+K icon in the upper admin bar, lets you access your favorite tools from anywhere in the dashboard.
Explore typography from one place, regardless of theme. Install, upload and manage your font collection from the new dedicated font management page, with support for block, hybrid and classic themes.
Visually scrub through revision versions to see what changed at a glance, with markers that make editorial choices more intuitive. Easily pick the revision you want and restore instantly.

Design, Create, Customize

A simpler way to build.

Let WordPress be your muse with new blocks, block supports, and design tools that add visual agility, granular control, and keep every element of your website on brand, with fresh new touches.
Showcase your ideas in a lightbox slideshow with the new gallery block, and finesse your markup with the new Heading block. Deliver clear site navigation with the new Breadcrumbs block, and add more detail to your designs with the new Icons block.
Enhanced responsiveness controls in 7.0 make your site more user friendly. Hide and reveal blocks based on device, without affecting other viewports.
Design and build your menu overlay with blocks and patterns, fully customizable with the styles you want visitors to see. Add columns, stylize typography, or embed your own close button in the overlay. Start with a template or create your own menu from scratch.
Fine tune page design and layout with Patterns that act as a single unit, detachable for more isolated control. Insert your pattern, swap elements and customize with ease.
Style every detail of content with custom CSS at the block level, right in your post or page.

Developer’s toolbox

Advanced tools for building your way.

WordPress 7.0 lets you build faster, better, stronger, and easier with an extensive set of expanded APIs and enhanced functionality.
Create blocks and patterns on the server level using only PHP, auto-registered with the block API.
Explore a more extensible Site Editor, with routing, route validation, and a new wordpress/boot package that allows plugins to build custom site-editor pages.

And much more

For a comprehensive overview of all the new features and enhancements in WordPress 7.0, please visit the feature-showcase website.

Learn more about WordPress 7.0

Learn WordPress is a free resource for new and experienced WordPress users. Learn is stocked with how-to videos on using various features in WordPress, interactive workshops for exploring topics in-depth, and lesson plans for diving deep into specific areas of WordPress.
Read the WordPress 7.0 Release Notes for information on installation, enhancements, fixed issues, release contributors, learning resources, and the list of file changes.
Explore the WordPress 7.0 Field Guide and learn about the changes in this release with detailed developer notes to help you build with WordPress.

The 7.0 release squad

Every release comes to you from a dedicated team of enthusiastic contributors who help keep things on track and moving smoothly. The team that has led 7.0 is a global, cross-functional group of contributors who are always ready to champion ideas, remove blockers, and resolve issues.

Thank you, contributors

The mission of WordPress is to democratize publishing and embody the freedoms that come with open source. A global and diverse community of people collaborating to strengthen the software supports this effort.
WordPress 7.0 reflects the tireless efforts and passion of more than 875+ contributors in countries all over the world. This release also welcomed over 200+ first-time contributors!
Their collaboration delivered more than 420 enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all – a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress open source community.

More than 70 locales have fully translated WordPress 7.0 into their language. Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps make WordPress available in 200+ languages.
Thank you to the more than 21 web hosts that have tested pre-release versions for WordPress 7.0, helping ensure that WordPress and hosting platforms are fully compatible, free of errors, and optimized for the best possible user experience.
Last but not least, thanks to the volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users worldwide.

Get involved

Participation in WordPress goes far beyond coding. And learning more and getting involved is easy. Discover the teams that come together to Make WordPress and use this interactive tool to help you decide which is right for you.

Original source

The fourth Release Candidate (“RC4”) for WordPress 7.0 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC4 on a test server and site.

Reaching this phase of the release cycle is an important milestone. While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 7.0 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 7.0 RC4 in four ways:

Plugin

Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.)

Direct Download

Download the RC4 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.

Command Line

Use this WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=7.0-RC4

WordPress Playground

Use the WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup required – just click and go!

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.0 is May 20, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who helps with testing!

Please continue checking the Make WordPress Core blog for 7.0-related posts in the coming weeks for more information.

What’s in WordPress 7.0 RC4?

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? Take a look at the WordPress 7.0 Field Guide. For technical information related to the issues addressed since RC3, you can browse the following links:

• Closed 7.0 WordPress Core Trac tickets since May 8, 2026
• 7.0 Gutenberg commits since May 8, 2026

How you can contribute

WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can get involved with the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

Get involved in testing

Testing for issues is crucial to the development of any software. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. Your help testing the WordPress 7.0 RC4 version is key to ensuring that the final release is the best it can be.

This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 7.0.

For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

If you encounter a potential bug or issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? मराठी? ಕನ್ನಡ? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. This release milestone (RC4) marks the hard string freeze point of the 7.0 release cycle.

An RC4 haiku

Step into the next,
bold, new era of WordPress.
Seven-oh is blessed.

Props to @chaion07 for proofreading and review.

Original source

The third Release Candidate (“RC3”) for WordPress 7.0 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC3 on a test server and site.

Reaching this phase of the release cycle is an important milestone. As always, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 7.0 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 7.0 RC3 in four ways:

Plugin

Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.)

Direct Download

Download the RC3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.

Command Line

Use this WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=7.0-RC3

WordPress Playground

Use the WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup is required – just click and go!

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.0 is May 20, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who helps with testing!

Please continue checking the Make WordPress Core blog for 7.0-related posts in the coming weeks for more information.

What’s in WordPress 7.0 RC3?

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? Take a look at the WordPress 7.0 Developer Notes. For technical information related to the 143+ issues addressed since RC2, you can browse the following links:

• Closed 7.0 WordPress Core Trac tickets since March 26, 2026
• 7.0 Gutenberg commits since March 26, 2026

Note: Real Time Collaboration will not be included in the 7.0 release and will be re-evaluated during the 7.1 release cycle. Because of this, this RC3 version is no longer considered a “new Beta 1”.

How you can contribute

WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can get involved with the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

Get involved in testing

Testing for issues is crucial to the development of any software. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. Your help testing the WordPress 7.0 RC3 version is key to ensuring that the final release is the best it can be.

This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 7.0.

For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

If you encounter a potential bug or issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Update your theme or plugin

For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 7.0 beta releases. If you haven’t yet, make sure to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 7.0.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Test on your hosting platforms

Web hosts provide vital infrastructure for supporting WordPress and its users. Testing on hosting systems helps inform the development process while ensuring that WordPress and hosting platforms are fully compatible, free of errors, optimized for the best possible user experience, and that updates roll out to customer sites without issue.

Thank you to the Hosts who helped test variations of new RTC architecture: Kinsta, Bluehost, GoDaddy, WordPress.com, XServer, and Ionos, and to the hosts who participate in distributed testing regularly.

Want to test WordPress on your hosting system? Get started with configuring distributed hosting tests here.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? मराठी? ಕನ್ನಡ? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. This release milestone (RC3) marks the hard string freeze point of the 7.0 release cycle.

An RC3 haiku

By the tides of sea ,
where wind moves gently through trees ,
sprouts up RC3.

Props to @desrosj , @peterwilsoncc for proofreading and review.

Original source

The second Release Candidate (“RC2”) for WordPress 7.0 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC2 on a test server and site.

Reaching this phase of the release cycle is an important milestone. While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 7.0 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 7.0 RC2 in four ways:

Plugin

Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.)

Direct Download

Download the RC2 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.

Command Line

Use this WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=7.0-rc2

WordPress Playground

Use the WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup required – just click and go!

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.0 is April 9, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who helps with testing!

Please continue checking the Make WordPress Core blog for 7.0-related posts in the coming weeks for more information.

What’s in WordPress 7.0 RC2?

What’s new in WordPress 7.0? Check out the Beta 1 announcement and 7.0 Developer Notes for details and highlights. For technical information related to issues addressed since RC1, you can browse the following links:

• GitHub commits since March 24, 2026
• Closed Trac tickets since March 24, 2026

How you can contribute

WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

Get involved in testing

Testing for issues is crucial to the development of any software. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute.

Your help testing the WordPress 7.0 RC1 version is key to ensuring that the final release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 7.0. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

What else to test:

• Real Time Collaboration
• Pattern Editing and content-only Interactivity

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Test on your hosting platforms

Web hosts provide vital infrastructure for supporting WordPress and its users. Testing on hosting systems helps inform the development process while ensuring that WordPress and hosting platforms are fully compatible, free of errors, optimized for the best possible user experience, and that updates roll out to customer sites without issue.

Want to test WordPress on your hosting system? Get started with configuring distributed hosting tests here.

Update your theme or plugin

For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 7.0 beta releases. If you haven’t yet, make sure to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 7.0.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? मराठी? ಕನ್ನಡ? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. This release milestone (RC2) also marks the hard string freeze point of the 7.0 release cycle.

An RC2 haiku

Once just a dream,

RC2 flows like a stream

with seven-oh gleam.

Props to @amykamala and @annezazu for proofreading and review.

Original source

The first Release Candidate (“RC1”) for WordPress 7.0 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is still under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended to evaluate RC1 on a test server and site.

WordPress 7.0 RC1 can be tested using any of the following methods:

• Plugin: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.)
• Direct Download: Download the RC1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
• Command Line: Use this WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=7.0-RC1
• WordPress Playground: Use the WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup required – just click and go!

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.0 is April 9, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who helps with testing!

Please continue checking the Make WordPress Core blog for 7.0-related posts in the coming weeks for more information.

What’s in WordPress 7.0 RC1?

What’s new in WordPress 7.0? Check out the Beta 1 announcement and WordPress 7.0 Developer Notes for details and highlights.

RC1 contains more than 134 updates and fixes since the Beta 5 release. You can browse the technical details for all issues addressed since Beta 5 using these links:

• GitHub commits since March 12, 2026
• Closed Trac tickets since March 12, 2026

New Features since Beta 1

The release squad in conjunction with project leadership identified additional features that were not ready for beta 1 but are included in RC1 as supporting requirements for flagship features of the release.

• AI Connectors Screen – A new admin screen for connecting AI providers to your site and an API for registering additional ones.
• The Command Palette is now available via a ⌘K or Ctrl+K shortcut in the admin bar.

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? These tickets and pull requests are just some of the latest updates:

• #GB-76700: Client Side Media as plugin only
• #GB-76722: Add support for non-AI providers on Connector’s Screen
• #GB-76736: New activation hook to enable RTC by default
• #64904: WP_ALLOW_COLLABORATION constant for RTC
• #GB-76704: Increased polling intervals for RTC
• #GB-76643: Real Time Collaboration is opt-in by default
• #GB-76460: Toggle to turn RTC session notifications on/off
• #62046: Update PHP AI Client package to 1.3.1
• #GB-76550: Revisions: Show changed block attributes in sidebar
• #62067: Single config option to disable all LLM related features
• #63697: OPCache added to Site Health > Info > Server

The final release is on track for April 9, 2026. As always, a successful release depends on your confirmation during testing. So please download and test!

How you can contribute

WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

Help test this release

Testing for issues is crucial to the development of any software. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. Your help testing the WordPress 7.0 RC1 version is key to ensuring that the final release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 7.0.

What to test:

• Real Time Collaboration
• Pattern Editing and content-only Interactivity

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Test on your hosting platforms

Hosting systems provide vital infrastructure for supporting WordPress and its users. Testing on hosting infrastructure ensures that WordPress and hosting systems are fully compatible, free of errors, optimized for the best possible user experience, and that updates roll out to customer sites without issue. Thank you to all web hosts who test WordPress!

Want to set up testing on your hosting system? Get started with configuring distributed hosting tests here.

Update your theme or plugin

For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 7.0 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 7.0. If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? मराठी? ಕನ್ನಡ? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. This release milestone (RC1) marks the hard string freeze point of the 7.0 release cycle. However, strings will not be available for translation until RC2 later this week.

An RC1 haiku

RC1 arrives
with momentum, sped up time
and jazz on the mind.

Props to @4thhubbard, @desrosj, @jeffpaul, @chaion07, @audrasjb, @jorbin for collaboration and review.

Original source

WordPress 7.0 Beta 5 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is still under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended to test Beta 5 on a test server and site.WordPress 7.0 Beta 5 can be tested using any of the following methods:

Plugin

Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.)

Direct Download

Download the Beta 5 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.

Command Line

Use this WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=7.0-beta5

WordPress Playground

Use the WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup is required – just click and go!

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.0 is still April 9, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who helps with testing!

Please continue checking the Make WordPress Core blog for 7.0-related posts in the coming weeks for more information. What’s new in WordPress 7.0? Check out the Beta 1, Beta 2, Beta 3, and Beta 4 announcements for details and highlights.

How to test this release

Your help testing the WordPress 7.0 Beta 5 version is key to ensuring everything in the release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 7.0.

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs .Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Beta 5 updates and highlights

WordPress 7.0 Beta 5 contains more than 101 updates and fixes since the Beta 3 release.

Each beta cycle focuses on bug fixes, and more are on the way with your help through testing. You can browse the technical details for all issues addressed since Beta 3 using these links:

• GitHub commits since March 5, 2026
• Closed Trac tickets since March 5, 2026

Issues addressed since Beta 4:

• GitHub commits since March 10, 2026
• Closed Trac tickets since March 10, 2026

WordPress 7.0 Beta 5 contains a new feature!

Instantly access all the tools you need with a single click using the new Command Palette shortcut in the Omnibar! In 7.0 Beta 5, logged-in editors will see a field with a ⌘K or Ctrl+K symbol in the upper admin bar that unfurls the command palette when clicked. The new command palette entry point streamlines navigation and customization, giving you full control from anywhere on your site – whether you’re editing, designing or just browsing plugins.

A Beta 5 haiku

A smooth melody

Beta 5 plays on its strings.

Seven brings good things.

Props to @amykamala, @annezazu and @4thhubbard for proofreading and review.

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