WordPress 6.3 Planning Roundup

Following the planning proposal, this post summarizes the release schedule and squad composition for the next major WordPress release – 6.3. The proposal saw an overwhelmingly high number of volunteers; thank you to everybody who raised their hand to participate and help make WordPress the amazing project it is. 🤝

WordPress 6.3 Schedule

The schedule remains as originally proposed. There was some discussion around the date for BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 2 and the US Independence Day: while the planned date stays the same, the final Beta 2 date can be adjusted by the release squad depending on the availability of contributors around that date.

Milestone	Date
Alpha (trunktrunk A directory in Subversion containing the latest development code in preparation for the next major release cycle. If you are running "trunk", then you are on the latest revision. open for 6.3 release)	March 9, 2023
Beta 1	June 27, 2023
Beta 2	July 3, 2023
Beta 3	July 11, 2023
Release Candidaterelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). 1	July 18, 2023
Release Candidate 2	July 25, 2023
Release Candidate 3	August 1, 2023
Dry Run	August 7, 2023
WordPress 6.3 General Release	August 8, 2023

WordPress 6.3 Release Squad

Thanks once again to everybody that volunteered for the release squad! Considering all applications for the different roles, a release team has been assembled with input from project leadership to ensure all aspects of the release are properly covered.

• Release LeadRelease Lead The community member ultimately responsible for the Release.: Matías Ventura
• Release Coordinators: Francesca Marano, Héctor Prieto
• CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Tech Leads: Andrew Ozz, Mike Schroder
• Editor Tech Leads:  Isabel Brison, Ramon Dodd
• Core Triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. Leads: Jb Audras, Ahmed Kabir Chaion, Mukesh Panchal, Olga Glecker
• Editor Triage Leads: Anne McCarthy, Birgit Pauli-Haack, Firoz Sabaliya, Nick Diego
• Documentation Leads: Femy Praseeth, Steven Lin, Leonardus Nugraha, Mushrit Shabnam
• Marketing & Communications Leads: Dan Soschin, Jonathan Pantani, Meher Bala
• Test Leads: Brian Alexander, Pooja Derashri, Chris Malone
• Design Leads: Tammie Lister, Rich Tabor
• Performance Leads: Felix Arntz, Emily Clarke

The release team has been expanded in a few areas. In particular, the Core and Editor Triage Lead roles have been increased compared to past releases, allowing the squad to run bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. scrubs in different time zones and triage all around the world!

Unfortunately, even such a big release squad cannot accommodate all raised hands. Contributors are more than welcome to ride along with the release process on the #6-3-release-leads SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel, especially in preparation for participating in 6.4 and future release squads. However, all release decisions will ultimately be the release team’s to make.

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Props to @chanthaboune and @cbringmann

#6-3, #planning