With the release of WordPress 6.9, and a December that is usually a rest period for many, discussions are already starting about what WordPress 7.0 will bring and when it will arrive.
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Program transcript
Hello, Iâm Alicia Ireland, and youâre listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community.
In this episode, youâll find the information from December 8 to 14, 2025.
MatĂas Ventura has begun to give some clues about what is being considered for the future version of WordPress 7.0. With a round number, it is conceived as a high-impact release. Instead of publishing a definitive list of features, the team outlines focus areas and priorities that are already emerging for this next major version.
First, real-time collaboration within the editor remains a priority. Work has already been done with the Yjs library in tests and prototypes, and the goal for 7.0 is to offer an experience where multiple editors can work simultaneously on the same content, with visual presence and a solid shared history.
Another key focus is the redesign of the administration area, Admin UI and UX. While 6.9 introduced tools such as DataViews and DataForms and laid the groundwork with design tokens, 7.0 is expected to move toward a more modern and coherent interface, reducing inconsistencies, improving navigation and accessibility, and consolidating reusable components for the admin.
In addition, the ability to combine multiple API improvements, such as the Interactivity API and the Abilities API, will continue to evolve. WordPress wants a core that supports intelligent integrations and broader workflows, both for developers and for AI-based tools, without being tied to proprietary solutions. This is part of a broader effort to make the system more interoperable and flexible.
The planning also emphasizes the importance of coordination between teams, with the Core Program Team acting as a facilitator to align documentation, handbooks, roadmaps, and community efforts. Unlike previous releases, this is not about a single âbig feature,â but about a series of structural improvements that together modernize the project.
WordPress 7.0 aims to consolidate the foundations that began in 6.9, especially in collaboration, admin design, and modern APIs, without a closed list of features yet, but with a clear direction of sustained evolution.
After the release of WordPress 6.9, the Core team published a series of bug fixes, known as hotfixes, to resolve issues detected in the final release. These fixes cover functional issues reported by the community and found in production after launch, including compatibility problems with certain themes and plugins, API adjustments, and regressions in editor components. These hotfixes are distributed quickly through the automatic update system and documented in the changelogs so administrators and developers know exactly what has been fixed.
The Core team has proposed modifying its coding standard to allow the use of the PHP short echo tag, which is currently prohibited along with the simple short tag. The original reason for banning it was historical: before PHP 5.4 it could be disabled, which could cause some code not to execute and be displayed as plain text.
Since PHP 5.4 this is no longer possible, and WordPress stopped supporting very old PHP versions years ago, so the incompatibility that justified the ban no longer exists. Allowing it would offer a more concise syntax for outputting values in templates without introducing compatibility risks. The proposal does not force its use or change existing code: both forms would remain valid, and there will be no patches rewriting everything.
The Community team has officially launched the Global Partner Program 2026, a unified sponsorship framework designed to support the sustainable growth of the project worldwide.
The program offers three sponsorship levels: Global Leader, Regional Powerhouse, and Community Builder. Each includes specific benefits such as global event presence, visibility in official materials, exclusive updates, and access to a Slack channel for direct communication with community teams.
The funds raised will be used to support core WordPress ecosystem activities, including local events and WordCamps, Meetup license fees for more than 670 active groups, and administrative costs such as insurance and annual audits to ensure transparency. The program aims to balance support for global initiatives with resources that directly impact local communities and encourage continued participation from contributors and sponsors around the world.
And finally, this podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons license as a derivative version of the podcast in Spanish; you can find all the links for more information, and the podcast in other languages, at WPpodcast .org.
Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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