WordPress 6.8 will be released on April 15, 2025. The first release of 2025 will be a polish and bug-fix release with fewer new features than previous releases.
Core Team’s Jonathan Desrosiers shared the details and it comes at a time when Automattic has decided to reduce their sponsored contributions to match WP Engine’s.
Jonathan Desrosiers shared that “After evaluating the current active initiatives, there will likely be fewer features ready to ship when compared to other recent major releases. As a result, 6.8 will focus primarily on being a polish and bug fix release. New features will be considered if deemed reasonably ready.”
The Release Squad
Matt Mullenweg will lead the release. He said, “In the meantime, on top of my day job running a 1,700+ person company with 25+ products, which I typically work 60-80 hours a week on, I’ll find time on nights and weekends to work on WordPress 6.8 and beyond. Myself and other “non-sponsored” contributors have been doing this a long time and while we may need to reduce scope a bit I think we can put out a solid release in March.”
The other members of the squad include:
- Coordination – Jeffrey Paul & Michelle Frechette
- Tech Leads – Joe McGill, Jonathan Desrosiers, George Mamadashvili
- Triage Lead – Jb Audras
- Design Lead – Tammie Lister
- Performance Lead – Felix Arntz
- Test Lead – Krupa Nanda
WordPress Core Committer Aaron Jorbin will manage tickets and organize minor releases for the 6.8 release cycle.
The squad is also a bit smaller than usual because, as mentioned above, this release is a polish and bug fix release. Also, the Core Tech Lead and Editor Tech Lead roles have been merged into a unified “Tech Leads” role, fostering greater coordination across Gutenberg and Core development.
And like in WordPress 6.7, the Marcomms lead role has been merged with that of the Release Coordination. For the first time, in WordPress 6.8, the Release Coordinator role will be Release Coordination to simplify translation in languages with gendered nouns.
Community Response
Some users are happy with the upcoming release plans. Jeff Chandler, founder of WPTavern, said, “it’s about damn time lol.” Marketing Consultant Bridget Willard shared, “Nothing wrong with back to basics.”
Former COO of Snopes Vinny Green compared the announcement to “the open source equivalent of “threatening us with a good time.””
It remains to be seen how the release will progress as several noteworthy contributors/companies have stopped contributing to WordPress or have been banned from WordPress.org. Also, the biggest contributor, Automattic, has reduced its contribution to just 45 hours a week.
For those eager to participate in the 6.8 release process, joining the #core channel on WordPress Slack is the best way to get involved.