WordPress 7.0 RC2 is out, with the final release set for April 9, 2026. How to install it with WP-CLI or Playground, and what to stress test first: real-time collaboration, pattern editing, and the Connectors AI endpoints.
An unplanned Beta 6 arrived on March 20, 2026 and pushed WordPress 7.0’s RC1 to March 24. The extra cycle covers the DataViews admin overhaul and the PHP 7.2/7.3 drop, and the release also brings the Connectors API for credential handling.
WordPress 6.9.2 shipped without three of its ten security commits, then broke classic themes that return stringable objects from template_include. What happened across 6.9.3 and 6.9.4, and what the Core team is changing about the process.
WordPress 7.0 ships the PHP AI Client, and the community has already built connectors for Grok, Mistral, Ollama and OpenRouter. What each one covers, how provider registration works, and the switching case worth testing first.
WordPress 7.0 RC1 adds the AI Connectors screen and turns on real-time collaboration, with over 134 changes since Beta 5. Here is what to test on staging before the April 9 release, including the RTC constant and the polling load it brings.
The CSS corner-shape property paired with a scroll timeline, using superellipse() exponents instead of keywords, plus the isolation fix for mix-blend-mode breaking your stacking context.
RC1 for WordPress 7.0 was due today and now lands on March 24, 2026. The holdups are real-time collaboration performance and client-side media optimization, plus a fresh look at release package size. Both are worth watching before you update.
The Plugin Directory now ships a wp-env setup, so you can boot a local copy instead of guessing how its backend behaves. Here is what works inside it, and where it stops short of the live site.
Beta 6 lands 132 fixes, drops Client-side Media Processing to shrink the package, and stretches Real-Time Collaboration polling by 4x. Collaboration is opt-in behind a constant now, and RC1 is due March 24th.
Beta 5 is out and RC1 ships tomorrow, so the WordPress 7.0 feature set is settled. Notes on pattern overrides reaching custom blocks, viewport controls landing in core, and why per-block custom CSS worries me.