The 7.0 release went back from RC to Beta so Real-Time Collaboration data could move out of post_meta and into its own table. Also covers the WP AI Client, pseudo-states in theme.json and the Playground MCP server.
Notes from the April 8, 2026 dev chat: WordPress 7.0 makes the collaboration sync layer provider agnostic, so polling is only the default. What that means for WebSocket providers, CRDT reconciliation and block API v3.
WordPress 7.0 ships three pieces of AI plumbing: the Abilities API for registering what a site can do, the AI Client for provider-agnostic model calls, and the MCP Adapter that exposes both to assistants like Claude.
Notes from the April 8 contributor chat: the AI Client centralizes the transport layer, the Connectors page holds credentials for any service and not just AI, and the MCP adapter is close to 0.5.0.
WordPress.com opened plugins and Global Styles to every paid plan, starting at Personal. Here is what the lower tiers actually give you, and why SFTP, WP-CLI and staging still sit behind the Business plan.
The Twenty Twenty-Seven core team added a Lead Mentor next to the usual dev leads. It reads like a soft change, but it is aimed at the contributor bottleneck that has been producing burnout and technical debt for years.
The WordCamp Asia 2026 schedule is out: Mumbai, April 9 to 11, leaning hard on AI, enterprise scale, and the Interactivity API. My notes on which sessions are worth a slot in your day.
The Gutenberg repo is changing how iteration issues work: a fresh issue per release, monthly updates before beta, weekly through RC, and a template that asks for scope and blockers up front.
@wordpress/build is the tooling Gutenberg already uses internally: esbuild in place of Webpack, entry points discovered by folder, and a generated PHP file that handles enqueueing. It is not ready to replace wp-scripts on an ordinary plugin yet.
WooCommerce is at WordCamp Asia 2026 in Mumbai, with a community meetup that needs an RSVP and a booth in the Automattic area. The Developer Advocates are not attending this time, so here is how to get technical questions to them anyway.