The Dev Chat on January 14, 2026 settled something that had been drifting for a while. Support for PHP 7.2 and 7.3 is going away in the 7.0 release, which means WordPress 7.0 development can lean on modern PHP without hedging every function against a server configuration from a decade ago.
What dropping PHP 7.2 buys WordPress 7.0 development
If you have spent years writing shims so a plugin keeps working on ancient PHP, this one lands well. A small share of sites are still on 7.2 and they will feel the change. Everyone else gets code that runs faster and holds less in memory, because PHP 8.0 and up are better at both than the versions they replaced.
A higher baseline means WordPress 7.0 development can use constructor property promotion, union types and the nullsafe operator without keeping a fallback path around. If any of your clients are still parked on legacy hosting, start the migration conversation now rather than during the beta. I went through the technical side in an earlier post on dropping PHP 7.2 support.
The argument over the PHP filter extension
A subtler thread in the same Dev Chat was about the filter extension. Core hardly touches it today, with PHPMailer as the exception. The proposal moves it from optional to built-in so the environment checks get shorter, and several developers pointed out it already ships with nearly every modern PHP install.
The catch is that senior contributors mostly agree filter_var is not dependable, and email validation is the worst case. So the question on the table is whether you standardize on a built-in extension for the simpler check, knowing you would rarely want to call it. The official PHP Filter documentation spells out how the filters behave.
<?php
/**
* Example of why we want to move past PHP 7.2.
* Modern PHP 8.x features make our logic much cleaner.
*/
function bbioon_modern_check( ?string $input ): string {
// PHP 8.0+ Nullsafe operator and Union Types
return $input ?? 'Default Value';
}
// In WordPress 7.0 Development, we can stop writing
// defensive code for versions released in 2017.
?>Nominations and the call for volunteers
The project is looking for volunteers for the 7.0 release squad. It is a reasonable entry point if you have wanted to work on the software behind 40% of the web and never found the door. Nominations for the 2026 Core Team Representatives are open as well, so if you know someone who lives in Trac tickets, put their name forward before the deadline.
If keeping up with all of this is eating your dev hours, it is the kind of work I take on. I have been building in WordPress since the 4.x days.
Where the 7.0 roadmap stands
The 6.9 retrospective is still open, and what comes out of it will shape how the 7.0 cycle gets run. Two items sit on that list: the release process itself, and the final call on which PHP extensions core treats as required. I will keep following both through the beta cycles.
