WordPress Returns to Three Major Releases in 2026, Each Tied to a Flagship WordCamp Event

After two years of slowing down — 2024 saw just two major releases and 2025 only one — WordPress is returning to a three-release cadence in 2026. Each version is deliberately timed to coincide with one of the project’s flagship community events.

What Happened

The WordPress project has confirmed a four-month release cadence for 2026 with three major versions:

• WordPress 7.0 — April 9, 2026 at WordCamp Asia (Mumbai, India). This will be the first time a major release ships during a Contributor Day. 7.0 brings AI Connectors, Real-Time Collaboration, Content Guidelines, visual revision tracking, and the Command Palette in the admin bar.
• WordPress 7.1 — August 19, 2026 at WordCamp US. Scope is still being defined, but it’s expected to build on the AI infrastructure from 7.0 and advance Full Site Editing capabilities.
• WordPress 7.2 — December 8–10, 2026 alongside the State of the Word. This end-of-year release will close out the 2026 roadmap.

The schedule also leaves room for 1–3 minor releases between each major, typically on a six-to-eight-week timeline. We’ve already seen this in action: WordPress 6.9 shipped in December 2025, followed by 6.9.1, 6.9.2, 6.9.3, and 6.9.4 in the months since.

Why It Matters

WordPress slowed to one major release in 2025 partly due to the ambitious scope of 6.9 (which introduced the Abilities API and laid groundwork for AI integration) and partly due to community disruptions around the Automattic–WP Engine dispute. Returning to three releases signals the project is ready to ship iteratively again rather than bundling everything into one massive annual update.

Tying releases to WordCamps is a deliberate community strategy. It guarantees thousands of contributors are physically together for release day, which helps with bug triage, documentation, and celebration. It also creates natural deadlines that prevent scope creep — a four-month window is long enough to build meaningful features but short enough to force prioritization.

For site owners, a faster cadence means smaller, more manageable updates. Instead of one enormous jump with dozens of breaking changes, you get three incremental steps. That’s generally easier to test, deploy, and troubleshoot.

What You Should Do

Mark your calendar:

• April 9: WordPress 7.0 (RC1 due March 24)
• August 19: WordPress 7.1
• December 8–10: WordPress 7.2

Site owners: Test WordPress 7.0 Beta 5 on a staging site now. The final release is less than three weeks away. If you’re running a production site, plan your update for the week after April 9 once any edge-case patches land.

Developers: If you maintain plugins or themes, get compatibility testing into your workflow for each release. Three majors a year means three compatibility checks — budget time for it.

Sources

• Proposal: 2026 Major Release Schedule — Make WordPress Project
• Proposed 2026 Release Schedule Ties Major WordPress Versions to Flagship Events — The Repository
• WordPress 7.0 Release on Contributor Day — WordCamp Asia 2026