WordPress 7.0 brings real-time collaboration, and it asks a lot of the database and object cache. The Core team wants host test data by May 4th, so here is what the suite checks and where hosts usually get bitten.
WordPress 7.0 slipped to May 20, 2026 because RC3 is closer to a second Beta 1 than a release candidate. Early real-time collaboration code fired around 4,000 SQL queries in two minutes of editing, so core is rebuilding the storage layer.
WordPress 7.0 (Armstrong) is past the foundational AI work and into ecosystem plumbing. The connector approval experiment blocks plugins from your API keys until an admin says otherwise, and RC1 lands May 14, so provider plugins need updating now.
WordPress 7.0 RC3 landed without Real-Time Collaboration. Core pulled it over race conditions, memory use and server load, and pushed the work to 7.1. This post covers testing RC3 from WP-CLI and what plugin authors built on the RTC endpoints need to change.
WordPress.com opened the AI Assistant to every paid plan and shipped Studio Code, a beta CLI agent for local work. Notes on what the CLI does with block markup and what the plan change means day to day.
WooCommerce added a Subscriptions Health Check tool under Status. It finds subscriptions stuck on manual renewal after the HPOS cache bug, plus active subs with missing or overdue payment dates. Here is what caused it, and what the changelog left out.
WordPress 7.0 stopped hardcoding which blocks support Block Bindings and Pattern Overrides. Support is resolved through a filter now, so any lookup table you were trusting is out of date. Also new: a native Accordion block and an Icon block.
WordPress 7.0 lands May 20, 2026, and RC3 on May 8 is now being treated as the new Beta 1. The experimental Presence API gets its own wp_presence table with a 60-second TTL for tracking who is editing what.
WordPress 7.0 now ships May 20, 2026. Notes on why the schedule moved, why the release squad is treating RC3 as a new Beta 1, and the jump to PHP 7.4 as the minimum version.
The Presence API feature plugin gives the WordPress admin real-time awareness of who is editing what, using a dedicated ephemeral table on a 60-second TTL instead of hammering wp_options. Here is what ships with it, and where it still gets confused.