WordPress 6.8.1 Release Schedule

Since WordPress 6.8 was released last week, contributors have kept a close eye on incoming reports to the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ Support Forums, TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress., and the GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ repository on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/. The volume and severityseverity The seriousness of the ticket in the eyes of the reporter. Generally, severity is a judgment of how bad a bug is, while priority is its relationship to other bugs. of tickets mean that the maintenance release should be prepared perspicaciously.

Schedule

Date/TimeEvent
Tuesday, April 22, 2025Continued triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors., testing, and committing/backporting fixes.
April 24, 2025 at 18:00 UTCBug Scrub. WordPress 6.8.2 Milestone will be opened, and some tickets may be punted.
Friday, April 25, 2025 at 15:00 UTCBug Scrub.
Monday, April 28, 2025 at TBA UTCWordPress 6.8.1 RC1
Wednesday, April 30, 2025 at 16:30 UTCWordPress 6.8.1 General Release

Specific times for RCrelease 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). and General release will be announced in the 6.8 Release Leads room and will be based on availability of individuals helping with the release.

Targeted Fixes

The following are the high priority items that cumulatively make a minor releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. necessary:

WordPress 6.8.1 is intended as a 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.-fix only maintenance release. Other tickets besides the major ones above will be included provided they are issues introduced during the 6.8 cycle or intentionally deferred at the end of the 6.8 cycle. You can follow trac report 4 or the 6.8.x editor tasks board for other fixes.

Get Involved with 6.8.1

Bug Scrubs will happen in the #core room during the times posted above. Each of the open tickets is going to require development work along with testing and review. You can also run your own scrubs to help ensure that all of the correct tickets are fixed in this release. Additionally, some locales have strings in 6.8 in need of translation.

General coordination for the release will happen in the #6-8-release-leads channel and decisions around code for the release will be made in the #core room.

Props to @jeffpaul, @audrasjb, @joemcgill for assistance with this post.

#6-8, #6-8-1, #6-8-x, #minor-releases