WordPress

WordPress 7.1 will hide the Classic block from the inserter by default, and a merge proposal for a new custom post type is under discussion. The dev chat agenda also covers the 7.0.1 release schedule and a recap of restoring removed version history.

WordPress 7.1 hides the Classic block from the block inserter by default; existing Classic blocks continue to work and remain editable. A wp_classic_block_supports_inserter filter allows restoring the block to the inserter.

WordPress Core team posts a retrospective on the 7.0 development cycle and invites contributors and observers to share feedback on processes, squads, and the release in general via a form or comments through July 20, 2026.

WordPress 7.1 would merge the wp_knowledge custom post type, a shared storage primitive for author-facing and agent-facing site knowledge, with Guidelines as the first feature built on it. Guidelines gives site owners a canonical place to capture content standards such as voice, tone, image preferences, and per-block rules. Also ships the built-in types guideline, memory, and note, plus a Guidelines Settings page with per-scope records.

WordPress 7.1 introduces a persistent Guidelines feature for encoding editorial rules and brand voice into AI tooling, adds AI Client generation streaming and embedding support, and reorganizes the command palette with recent and suggested sections. Other planned work includes a dedicated Identity screen, responsive and pseudo-state styling in the Site Editor, admin color scheme support in the Site Editor, and a new On This Day dashboard widget.

WordPress 7.0.1 will be a bug-fix-only maintenance release led by a team of four co-leads. The release is scheduled for July 9, 2026, preceded by bug scrubs and an RC1 on July 1.

WordPress restored version history for PHP files shared between the Gutenberg repository and wordpress-develop, after a build-script change in the 7.0 cycle removed them from version control and caused integration failures, lost minification, bisect delays, and abandoned files persisting in beta/RC releases. The fix uses a merge branch to reconnect history at each Gutenberg sync commit.

WordPress 7.1 release squad assembled with Anne McCarthy as release lead. Smaller, focused team structure continues from 6.7—7.0 cycles, with greater emphasis on Make Team Rep coordination.

An experimental flag registers React 19 runtime scripts for developer testing before it becomes default. Media uploads now resume automatically after offline disconnection, the Site Editor chrome follows the user’s admin color scheme, and Columns and Gallery blocks can transform into Grid layouts. UltraHDR image support, a new Events widget for the experimental Dashboard, and real-time collaboration reliability improvements are also included.

Client-side media now supports UltraHDR gain maps, and media uploads gain retry with exponential backoff and network resilience. Dozens of fixes across block library, media editor, and writing flow, plus a new filterable entity view API.

Agenda for the June 17, 2026 WordPress developers chat includes a call for testing Unicode email addresses, a Core Committers WCEU recap, and a developer news summary for June 2026.

Work started on Gallery block support for the Enhanced Responsive Images Plugin, and a proposal was shared to add a libvips-based image editor to WordPress Core. Team planning for a Thursday release of Performance plugins with currently merged changes.

WordPress now supports Unicode email addresses for accounts, including non-ASCII local parts and decoded Punycode domain parts. This change updates is_email() and sanitize_email() and introduces a new WP_Email_Address class for structural analysis. Validation now matches the WHATWG email specification.

The WordPress Developers Chat will meet Wednesday, June 10, 2026, at 15:00 UTC in the core channel on Make WordPress Slack to discuss upcoming releases. Announcements include calls for WordPress 7.0.x release managers and testing of client-side media processing, plus an update that the Gutenberg React 19 upgrade has been temporarily reverted.

WordPress 7.0.0 was released May 20, 2026. While the work of a major release team includes people fil...

Gutenberg 23.3.2 reverts the React 19 upgrade announced days earlier after discovering that plugins built for React 18 crash due to runtime incompatibility in JSX element generation. WordPress plans a more incremental upgrade strategy with an experimental feature flag and compatibility layer for existing plugins, targeting WordPress 7.1.

Client-side media processing, which offloads image decoding, resizing, and encoding to the browser using WebAssembly, is graduating from a Gutenberg experiment to a WordPress 7.1 core feature and is now open for testing. The feature reduces CPU and memory load on servers during image uploads, supports modern formats including AVIF, WebP, HEIC, UltraHDR, and JPEG XL, and gracefully falls back to server-side processing in unsupported browsers.