The release squad for WordPress 7.1, the second major release of 2026, has been announced, with the final release targeted for August 19, 2026, the last day of WordCamp US 2026, where it is planned to be released. Planned areas of focus for the release include AI tooling, collaborative editing, responsive design capabilities, media enhancements, and other improvements across the WordPress platform.
Meet the WordPress 7.1 Release Squad
The squad includes contributors from across the community who will oversee release coordination, technical leadership, testing, and triage throughout the 7.1 development cycle.
Anne McCarthy (Architecture & Open Source Director at Automattic) will serve as Release Lead. Benjamin Zekavica (founder of Morvance) and Krupa Nanda (freelance QA consultant) will serve as Release Coordinators.
Aki Hamano (freelance WordPress developer and WordPress Core committer, sponsored to contribute to WordPress and Gutenberg by LOOS, Hostinger, Kinsta, and ServMask) and Joe Dolson (plugin developer, web accessibility consultant, and contributor sponsored by GoDaddy and Kinsta) were named Technical Leads.
Adrian Duffell (former WooCommerce engineer and WordPress plugin developer), Sajjad Hossain Sagor (WordPress developer), and Sergey Biryukov (WordPress Core contributor at Yoast) will serve as Triage Leads.
Huzaifa Al Mesbah (WordPress developer at Buzz Geek LLC) and Nikunj Hatkar (WordPress plugin developer at TeamUpdraft) will oversee testing efforts as Test Leads.
While McCarthy has been part of WordPress release squads in various capacities over the years, WordPress 7.1 will mark her first time serving as Release Lead.
Compared to the WordPress 7.0 release squad, Automattic’s representation in this cycle has decreased from five contributors to one, with Anne McCarthy being the only Automattician involved in the release squad.
Roadmap for WordPress 7.1
Collaborative editing is expected to receive significant attention during the WordPress 7.1 cycle, with contributors launching a dedicated outreach program aimed at gathering feedback from early adopters across a range of hosting environments and use cases. The feature was originally expected to ship with WordPress 7.0, but was pushed to the 7.1 development cycle following Matt Mullenweg’s decision.
The release is also expected to bring React 19 to Core. The React 19 upgrade was introduced in Gutenberg 23.3, but was later reverted due to compatibility issues.
McCarthy also published the WordPress 7.1 roadmap, which outlines planned work across AI, Admin experience improvements, APIs, media handling, block improvements, and performance improvements.
AI efforts continue
On the AI front, the roadmap proposes further development of the AI Client and planned improvements to connectors and AI-powered content guidelines are also included.
Admin experience improvements
Within the admin experience, planned work includes updates to DataViews and DataForms. The draft also highlights continued work on the WordPress Design System, a new “On This Day” dashboard widget, updates to the admin bar, revisions enhancements, and a dedicated Site Identity screen for managing logos, favicons, site titles, and taglines.
API updates
Several APIs are also expected to continue during the WordPress 7.1 cycle, including the Abilities API and Block Bindings. Other planned efforts include broader Unicode support for email addresses and a fully iframed editor experience upgrade.
Several new blocks planned
Work on blocks is expected to include expanding the Icon API, also proposes deprecating the Classic block while no longer loading TinyMCE by default when it is not needed.
Other planned work includes new Core blocks such as Playlist, Table of Contents, and Tabs, enhancements to existing blocks, and continued improvements to writing flow and drag-and-drop interactions.
Customization updates
Customization-related work includes making inherited styles easier to identify and edit, expanding support for interactive state styling such as hover, focus, and active states, and continuing refinements to the pattern editing experience.
The draft also highlights focus on responsive styling for blocks and theme-configurable viewport breakpoints.
Media Improvements
Efforts include continued development of client-side media processing, with planned support for features such as HEIC images, Ultra HDR, GIF-to-video conversion, more resilient uploads, and video transcoding. The draft also highlights a new media editor modal for cropping and editing media, alongside gallery improvements.
Performance Enhancements
Planned changes include updates to speculative loading and ongoing development of the View Transitions and Enhanced Responsive Images feature plugins, respectively.
The WordPress 7.1 development cycle will continue over the coming weeks, and Beta 1 is currently scheduled for July 15, 2026.