Planning for the WordPress 7.0 Release Squad has started, and if you have shipped through a few of these you know what a major version means for production sites. 7.0 sits inside the “Workflows” phase of Gutenberg. Following the pattern from the 6.x cycle, the core team wants a smaller leadership group this time.
According to the WordPress 7.0 release squad roadmap, the target date for the final release is Thursday, April 9, 2026. This coincides with WordCamp Asia, though as Matt Mullenweg (the designated Release Lead) clarified, traveling to the event isn’t a requirement for squad members. Most of the heavy lifting happens in the trenches of the #core Slack channel anyway.
The WordPress 7.0 release squad schedule
A 7.0 is mostly about stability. Alpha started in November 2025, and the pace picks up from here. The team has mapped the steps from Beta to General Availability (GA), so here is the timeline the WordPress 7.0 Release Squad has to manage:
- Beta 1: Thursday, February 19
- Beta 4: Thursday, March 12
- Release Candidate 1: Thursday, March 19
- Dry Run: Wednesday, April 8
- Final Release: Thursday, April 9, 2026
This release keeps the “Small Squad” approach. Rather than a deep hierarchy, there are leads for Coordination, Technical development, Triage, and Testing. That cuts the coordination overhead and leaves Make Team Reps to run the work inside their own domains.
Technical leadership and core responsibilities
A Tech Lead or Triage role is more than watching tickets. You end up chasing race conditions in the new Abilities API and checking that the AI tooling does not break legacy hooks. Triage is where most regressions get caught before they ship.
If you want to test the current state of 7.0-alpha, you can use WP-CLI to switch your environment. Just remember: do not run this on a production server unless you enjoy late-night emergency refactoring.
# Check out the latest development version
wp core update --version=trunk
# Verify current version and branch
wp core version --extraHow to volunteer for the squad
Volunteers of any experience level are welcome. If you are going for a lead role, though, you should know the WordPress release handbook well. Open for nominations right now:
- Release Coordination: Managing the clock and cross-team status updates.
- Tech Leads: High-level oversight of core and Gutenberg development.
- Triage Lead: The gatekeeper of Trac. You decide what ships and what gets punted to 7.1.
- Test Lead: Coordinating community-wide testing reports and debugging sessions.
If you are interested, you must leave a comment on the official Make post by Friday, January 16th.
If keeping up with the WordPress 7.0 Release Squad is eating your dev hours, I can take that off your plate. I have been wrestling with WordPress since the 4.x days.
The takeaway for developers
Don’t wait for the first Release Candidate to test your plugins and themes against 7.0. With the WordPress 7.0 Release Squad structured this way, communication should be faster, but the window for big changes is tighter. April 9 will arrive quickly. If you want a say in what ships, join the #7-0-release-leads Slack channel now.
