The WooCommerce 10.5 Release was originally scheduled to drop on Tuesday, February 3, 2026. However, the core team has officially hit the brakes. If you’ve been in this game long enough, you know that a last-minute postponement usually means one of two things: a critical security vulnerability or a massive regression that would have turned your support inbox into a war zone. This time, it’s about stability.
Why the WooCommerce 10.5 Release is Delayed
The main bottleneck involves the previously announced removal of the AccessiblePrivateMethods trait. During preliminary testing, the WooCommerce team realized that stripping this code right now might negatively affect site stability across various software environments. Specifically, they opted to avoid the code removal for the time being to prevent breaking legacy integrations that still rely on this specific trait logic.
Consequently, this is a smart move. I’ve seen enough “stable” releases break the add-to-cart flow because a minor deprecation was handled too aggressively. Furthermore, you can read more about how to fix WooCommerce 10.5 AccessiblePrivateMethods removal in my technical breakdown of the trait itself.
The Technical Catch: AccessiblePrivateMethods
If you aren’t familiar, this trait was a workaround for accessing private methods in older versions of the plugin. Removing it is part of a larger refactor to align with modern PHP standards. However, if your custom code or a third-party plugin is still hitting these hooks, the WooCommerce 10.5 Release would have triggered a fatal error on your checkout page.
// Example of what the trait removal looks like in the source
// If your code uses this, it needs a refactor.
trait AccessiblePrivateMethods {
// This is the code they are hesitating to delete right now
public function __call( $name, $arguments ) {
if ( method_exists( $this, $name ) ) {
return call_user_func_array( array( $this, $name ), $arguments );
}
}
}The team is scheduled to check back on February 4, 2026, at 12pm UTC to provide a status update. Until then, you should use this extra time to audit your logs for deprecation warnings. If you want to see what else is packed into this version, check out the official WooCommerce 10.5 developer preview.
Look, if this WooCommerce 10.5 Release stuff is eating up your dev hours, let me handle it. I’ve been wrestling with WordPress since the 4.x days.
Developer Takeaway
Stability always beats a deadline. While the delay is a minor inconvenience for those waiting for performance upgrades—like the ones discussed in why WooCommerce 10.5 is a major win for store performance—it’s far better than shipping a broken product. Keep an eye on the official developer blog for the final green light.
