WordPress Playground no longer supports PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php. 7.2 and 7.3. The minimum PHP version is now 7.4.
Your existing Blueprints will continue to work. If a Blueprint requests PHP 7.2 or 7.3, Playground automatically upgrades it to PHP 7.4 and displays a warning. No action is required, but you should update your Blueprints when convenient.
Why now?
Three factors drove this decision:
- WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. is moving forward. WordPress 7.0 (releasing April 2026) drops support for PHP 7.2 and 7.3. These versions now power less than 4% of WordPress sites combined—well below the 5% threshold the project uses for version support decisions.
- These versions don’t work reliably in Playground. PHP 7.2 crashes after a minute or two of use. PHP 7.3 runs noticeably slower than newer versions. These issues existed for months without user reports, confirming low adoption.  Also, they don’t seem to work with the PROXYFS mmap implementation.Â
- Maintenance takes time away from improvements. Supporting older PHP versions requires workarounds that delay features everyone can use—like fixing the
intlextension crash.
What you need to do
For most users: nothing. Playground handles the migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. automatically. Blueprint compilation requires PHP 7.4 or later; a warning will be displayed to remove it and update your Blueprint to load a supported version. If you are using the modular loaders, versions 7.2 and 7.3 will not receive updates.
Supported PHP versions
Playground now supports PHP 7.4 through PHP 8.5:
| Version | Status |
|---|---|
| PHP 7.4 | Supported (minimum) |
| PHP 8.0 | Supported |
| PHP 8.1 | Supported |
| PHP 8.2 | Supported |
| PHP 8.3 | Supported (recommended) |
| PHP 8.4 | Supported |
| PHP 8.5 | Supported |
Use latest In your Blueprint, always get the most recent stable PHP version.
Timeline
This change takes effect immediately in WordPress Playground. The automatic upgrade ensures backward compatibility—your existing Blueprints won’t break.
WordPress Core follows in April 2026 with WordPress 7.0, which sets PHP 7.4 as the minimum required version.
Questions?
Reach out in the #playground channel on WordPress.org Slack or open a GitHub issue.