WordPress 7.0 was released on 20 May 2026 under the codename ‘Armstrong’, in honour of the trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong. According to the announcement, the new major release marks the beginning of a new era: it introduces built-in artificial intelligence (AI) support, a revamped control panel and many new design tools. More than 875 contributors worked on the release, over 200 of whom were first-time contributors, and more than 21 hosting providers tested the pre-release versions.

A delay and a missing feature

Version 7.0 was originally scheduled for April 2026. On 22 April, the release team announced a new release date of 20 May, as they had been working on architectural changes necessary to ensure stability and performance. On 8 May, Matt Mullenweg decided that real-time collaborative editing would not be included in version 7.0 after all: he did not consider the feature robust enough, due to issues arising repeatedly during competitive scenarios, server load, memory usage and fuzz testing.

What’s at the heart of WordPress

• WP AI Client: a built-in, provider-independent interface through which plugins can communicate with generative AI models. Requests are managed by WordPress.
• Connectors screen: in the Settings > Connectors menu, you can manage your AI providers in one place. You can choose from three pre-configured providers (Anthropic, Google and OpenAI), or add your own, typically using an API key.
• Client-side Abilities API: the JavaScript counterpart to the Abilities API introduced in version 6.9, featuring its own interface and command palette integration.
• The separately installable AI plugin can generate and edit images, suggest titles and summaries, or write alternative text for the images.

To use the AI features, you need to integrate a service provider using your own API key. In this case, the processed content is sent to the chosen service provider, so it’s worth considering what data you’re sending.

Revamped control panel

• A new admin colour scheme called ‘Modern’ and a cleaner interface across the entire control panel.
• View transitions between screens; if reduced motion is enabled in the operating system, they will not appear.
• In the top admin bar, a ⌘K / Ctrl+K icon opens the command palette from anywhere.
• A separate font management page for block, hybrid and classic templates.
• Visual version comparison: you can use the slider to navigate between saved versions, and coloured markers show what has changed.

New blocks and design tools

• A breadcrumb block, which automatically follows the page hierarchy, and an Icons block.
• New Heading block with all heading levels, plus a gallery with zoom and a slideshow.
• Device-specific visibility: you can hide a block on mobile, tablet or desktop views without affecting the other views.
• The pop-up layer of the mobile menu (hamburger menu) can be built using blocks and templates.
• Custom CSS at block level, directly within the post or page.

For developers

Blocks and templates can now be registered using PHP alone; the website editor has been enhanced with route handling, allowing extensions to build their own editing pages; whilst DataViews, Block Bindings and the Interactivity API have been further expanded. PHPMailer has been updated to version 7.0.2. As a security measure, ‘Administrator’ and ‘Editor’ are no longer available as default roles for new users; if either of these was previously set, the Site Health tool will issue a warning.

The minimum PHP version is 7.4

From version 7.0 onwards, WordPress no longer supports PHP 7.2 and 7.3, as these two versions combined ran on less than 4 per cent of the sites monitored. The new minimum requirement is PHP 7.4, whilst the recommended version is 8.3 or later; PHP 7.0 is also fully compatible with PHP 8.5. Sites running on older versions of PHP will remain on the 6.9 branch and will only receive backported security patches.

On our WordPress hosting plans, you can select the PHP version via the control panel; in cPanel, you can change it via the ‘Select PHP Version’ interface. We’ve outlined which one is best in our article on the best PHP version for WordPress.

Update

Before a major version update, it is particularly important to take a backup and carry out tests in a staging environment, as the revamped control panel and the editor, which has moved into an iframe, may cause issues with older plugins. You can initiate the update via the Updates menu in the control panel or via WP Toolkit.

As of October 2026, fixes for the 7.0 branch had reached version 7.0.7. Full details can be found in the 7.0 release notes and the developer’s guide.

The previous major release was WordPress 6.9 ‘Gene’, and the next one will be WordPress 7.1 ‘Mary Lou’.

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