WordPress 7.0 Beta 1 delayed

WordPress 7.0 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. 1 was originally scheduled to be released today (Thursday, February 19th) starting at 15:00 UTC. However, in preparing for the release party a number of CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. unit test failures were identified in relation to the WP rest autosave controller and RTC tests in 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/, and client side media processing work needed to be backported.

The decision was made to delay the 7.0 Beta 1 release party to tomorrow, Friday, February 20th, 2026 at 15:00 UTC to allow time to resolve test failures and complete any necessary reviews and commits that can make Beta 1 the best it can be!

The rest of the 7.0 release cycle schedule is unchanged.

Props to @jeffpaul, @ellatrix, @sergeybiryukov and @audrasjb for proofreading and review.

#7-0, #beta