Pavel Ciorici has published The State of WordPress Themes report, a data-driven review of the WordPress.org theme directory, concluding that a relatively small group of themes continues to dominate adoption across the ecosystem. Drawing on data from nearly 15,000 themes, the report found that while theme developers are increasingly embracing block themes, users still overwhelmingly favor classic themes, with thousands of themes in the repository also remaining without updates for years.
A small number of themes continue to dominate the directory
According to the analysis, the WordPress.org theme repository currently hosts 14,822 themes created by 3,013 authors. Collectively, the themes have been downloaded more than 754 million times and account for around 12.2 million active WordPress installations. The report also notes that rated themes average 4.5 stars, while the average theme has between 598 and 820 active installs, depending on whether bundled default themes are included in the calculation.
One of the report’s key findings is the extent to which theme adoption is concentrated among a small number of projects. According to the data, the top 20 themes account for nearly two-thirds of all active WordPress installations, while the top 100 make up 77% of the total. Twenty Twenty-Five, Hello Elementor, and Astra are among the themes that have each surpassed one million active installs.
The concentration extends well beyond the top-ranked themes. Ciorici’s findings show that most themes in the WordPress.org repository have attracted relatively few users, with more than 7,300 reporting between 10 and 99 active installs and another 4,100 falling in the 100–299 range. At the other end of the spectrum, only 20 themes have exceeded 100,000 active installs.
The report also compares WordPress.org’s popularity rankings with data from BuiltWith, finding notable differences between the two. While the WordPress.org rankings are based on themes hosted in the official directory, BuiltWith’s data reflects themes running on live websites worldwide. According to the comparison, four of the world’s ten most widely used WordPress themes- Divi, Elegant Themes, Flatsome, and Avada are premium themes that are not available through the WordPress.org repository.
Developers are building block themes, but users continue to choose classic themes
Block themes continue to gain traction among developers, accounting for 44.2% of new theme submissions to WordPress.org in 2026, but that shift has yet to translate into widespread adoption.
Classic themes still account for 91.7% of non-default theme installations, compared with 8.3% for block themes. Among non-default block themes, only Extendable has surpassed 100,000 active installs, while several classic themes, including Astra, Hello Elementor, GeneratePress, and OceanWP, have each exceeded 500,000 active installs or reached the one million mark.
Looking at themes released over the past year, Bluehost Blueprint emerged as the most-installed newcomer with more than 40,000 active installs. It was followed by Unibiz at 5,000+ installs and Hello Commerce at 3,000+, with the remaining themes on the list attracting between 1,000 and 2,000 active installs.
Among themes with at least 20 user reviews, GeneratePress, Blocksy, News Portal, Cenote, and Royal Elementor Kit received the highest ratings. At the other end of the rankings were Twenty Twenty-Two, Twenty Twenty-Three, Twenty Nineteen, Alexandria, and Twenty Twenty-Four.
Thousands of themes have gone for years without updates
Maintenance also emerged as a concern across the WordPress.org theme directory, with 7,948 themes having gone more than a year without an update. Of those, 6,448 themes, 43.5% of the repository, have not been updated in at least two years, while 1,879 have remained untouched for more than a decade. The analysis estimates that around 919,000 WordPress websites continue to run themes that have not received updates in over two years.
Among the long-abandoned themes that remain in active use are the original Kubrick theme, published in the repository as Default by WordPress.org and last updated in 2010, Mercury by Ryan Sommers, Blank Canvas by Automattic, and Hemingway, Lovecraft, and Hitchcock by Anders Norén, all of which continue to be used despite going years without updates. The list also includes Graphene, Understrap, Qi, and NewsMag.
Theme publishing and user adoption were also led by different developers. Automattic topped the list by volume with 261 themes in the WordPress.org repository, followed by VW THEMES with 213 and wpkoithemes with 177. By total active installs across their theme portfolios, however, Elementor ranked first with more than 1.1 million installs, followed by Brainstorm Force, the developer behind Astra, at one million, and Nexcess with 524,000.
In addition to the report, Ciorici has published a live statistics page that is updated weekly, while the wp.md homepage provides a daily top 250 theme popularity ranking and dedicated pages for individual themes.