Hi there,

It’s good to be home again. It was an unusually long break, but I appreciate the series of official bank holidays that morph into long weekends away from the computer.

And of course, the catch-up is overwhelming. The creativity inside the WordPress community around content creation, development and design is highly energizing.

And it’s WordPress 7.0 release week! It’s finally here!

So don’t let me keep you any longer. Enjoy!

If you want to stop long enough to send me a note, I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Yours,
Birgit

WordCamp Europe is coming up fast. It’ll take place Jun 4 to 6, 2026. The schedule just was posted. If you still are on the fence about getting your ticket. Here are another 49 reasons to head to Krakow. The schedule lists 34 Talks, 3 Panels, 10 Workshops and 2 Keynotes.

For armchair WordCampers, like myself, there will be a livestream. After the WordCamp recordings will be uploaded to YouTube and WordPressTV.

A first selection of what I might watch:

• Keynote: Two worlds collide: WordPress at CERN
• HTML API practicum: a deep dive with Dennis Snell
• Human in the loop means something with Tammie Lister
• Beyond hamburgers: latest Navigation block changes with Sarah Norris
• WordPress for scientists: building engineering websites at CERN (regular talk) with Akanksha Chatterjee
• Build your developer portfolio: a hands-on guide to FSE with Dejan Rudic Vranic
• Closing Keynote with Matt Mullenweg on Saturday June 6, 2026.

if you rather stay in North America, WordCamp US just opened up the online ticket booth. It’ll take place from August 16 to August 19, 2026, in Phoenix, AZ. The calls for sponsors and speakers are also available now. The deadline for speaker submissions is next week Friday May 29, 2026.

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong”

After the decision to remove Real-time Collaboration from the release because it needs more time in the oven, so to speak, the release squad was really busy to produced RC 3 – 5 before the final release on Wednesday May 20, 2026.

Read more via the WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong” release post.

• The release squad also published the Field Guide with all the developer notes and salient details.
• Here on Gutenberg Times you can browse through WordPress 7.0 Source of Truth.
• For German-speaking WordPress users, I discussed the release with Simon Kraft on the Presswerk episode.
• Abha Thakor and I talked through a few features for the OpenChannels.fm episode to come out on Tuesday, May 26, 2026.

Justin Nealey product manager at GoDaddy breaks down why WordPress 7.0’s three new APIs matter far more than the headline features for plugin developers. The Connectors API means site owners manage their own AI provider keys centrally; WP AI Client gives you a single provider-agnostic call to invoke any model; and the Abilities API turns your plugin into something the site’s AI agent can reach for autonomously. Together, Nealey argues, your plugin stops being a destination users visit and becomes a verb the agent performs.

Ronak Vanpariya, web developer on Gujarat, India digs into why Real-Time Collaboration was pulled from WordPress 7.0 with a five-point technical post-mortem. You’ll learn how RTC had to work across every corner of the Site Editor, how simultaneous edits triggered race conditions corrupting block data, and how the feature’s reliance on persistent server connections would have overwhelmed shared hosting environments. Memory bloat on older devices and recurring block-tree breakage uncovered by fuzz testing sealed the decision. The feature lives on in the Gutenberg plugin.

Mike McAlister, creator of Ollie, released a video walkthrough of WordPress 7.0 covering the features he sees as most impactful for site builders. He walks through the new AI infrastructure — WP AI Client and the Connectors API — content-only pattern editing, customizable mobile menu overlays, block visibility controls for responsive design, per-block custom CSS, visual revisions, the new Icon and Breadcrumbs blocks, an upgraded Font Library screen, and a command palette shortcut.

In other WordPress Core news:

Immediately after the release of WordPress 7.0, Jeff Paul published the WordPress 7.1 Call for Volunteers. Work has already started since the firsty 7.0 Beta in February. The first beta for WordPress 7.1 is roughly eight weeks out and scheduled for July 15, 2026, and the final release for August 19, 2026 aimed at the last day of WordCamp US.

In addition to the punted Real-time collaboration feature, I discovered a few tracking issue for WordPress 7.1 already:

• #76525: Block Supports and Design Tools in WordPress 7.1 Opened by Aaron Robertshaw, this tracks new and enhanced block supports for 7.1, carrying over items descoped from 7.0. A living issue is updated as supports are added or dropped from the release scope.
• #75707: Block Visibility: Configurable Breakpoints and theme.json Integration The follow-up to 7.0’s block visibility work. The goal is to let themes define custom breakpoints via theme.json and make visibility extensible for future responsive features — laying a solid foundation before more viewport-aware tools arrive.
• #76045: DataViews, DataForm, et al. in WordPress 7.1 Tracks continued iteration on DataViews, DataViewsPicker, DataForm, and the Field API. Key work includes migrating @wordpress/dataviews to the new Design System primitives and extending DataForm to PHP-only blocks.
• #77199: Block Bindings in WordPress 7.1 Narrowed in scope to match contributor availability. The headline goal is integrating the Block Bindings UI into Block Fields and removing the previous Block Bindings UI, plus adding Block Bindings support for the Cover block.

First-time release lead Paulo Trentin brought us the latest version for the Gutenberg plugin, 23.2. In his release post What’s new in Gutenberg 23.2? (21 May he highlighted: You can now style blocks differently for tablets and phones right from Global Styles, so your designs adapt to each screen. Pop-up dialogs slide up from the bottom on mobile, making them easier to tap one-handed, and animations across the editor now share a consistent feel. You’ll also see smoother Content Types management, friendlier Shortcode handling, clearer Revisions diff markers for better accessibility, and steadier real-time collaboration when teammates edit together.

Justin Tadlock rounds up what’s new for WordPress developers in May 2026, with WordPress 7.0 landing on May 20. You’ll find early details on the Content Types experiment for managing custom post types and taxonomies in Core, a new @wordpress/grid package for building grid-based editor UIs, revisions support extended to templates and patterns, and a wave of block fixes covering the Tabs block, Image alignment, Search block styling, and Global Styles rendering.

If you are interested in learning more about this, the Content Types tracking issue outlines the experiment to bring custom taxonomy and post type management into the WordPress editor. The initial focus is on simple use cases — complex ones stay in plugin territory — with open tasks including a dedicated creation page, richer fields, a quick-edit versus full-edit distinction, and deeper DataViews integration. It’s a living issue and community input is welcome.

The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog #130 – WordPress 7.0, Gutenberg 22.9 and 23.0, WordCamp Europe, Block Themes and More with Tammie Lister, Chief Product Officer at Convesio

John Blackbourn clarified WordPress’s PHP support stance in a post that’s worth flagging for developers and hosts. The “beta” label for PHP 8.x support has been retired and removed retroactively from all WordPress versions. It was discouraging hosts and developers from upgrading. In short:

• The minimum recommended version remains PHP 8.3;
• the minimum supported version is PHP 7.4.

• Versions 6.9 and 7.0 now officially fully support PHP 8.5,
• Versions 6.8 and later fully support PHP 8.4, and
• Versions 6.4 and later fully support PHP 8.3.

Jeffrey Paul recaps what’s new in the WordPress AI canonical plugin 1.0.0, a milestone release landing alongside WordPress 7.0. Two new governance experiments stand out:

• Request Logging gives administrators visibility into every AI request fired across Core, plugins, and themes;
• Connector Approvals lets admins control which plugins can access configured AI providers.

Beyond governance, you’ll find comment moderation upgrades with sentiment and toxicity sorting right in the dashboard, AI alt text generation baked into the media editor workflow, and editorial workflow terminology tidied up. Looking ahead to 1.1.0, the team is exploring type-ahead suggestions, focus-aware crop suggestions, an AI Playground, and C2PA content provenance tracking for both text and images.

Rae Morey, editor of The Repository, took a deeper dive into this release: WordPress AI Plugin Hits 1.0 Milestone With New Request Logging and Connector Approvals Experiments

Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners

Jay Walsh, Director of Communications at Woo, announced that WooCommerce stores can now sell directly on YouTube via the Google for WooCommerce extension. You connect your store, tag products from your catalog in videos and Shorts, and they surface as shoppable cards while viewers watch — and also appear in your Channel Shopping tab. The same Merchant Center product feed that powers Google Shopping and Performance Max campaigns keeps everything in sync automatically, with AI-generated ad creative variations across formats included in version 3.6.

Milind More, Senior WordPress engineer at rtCamp introduces three new connectors for the WordPress AI plugin:

• OpenRouter for routing across hundreds of models with cost optimization,
• LM Studio for fully local inference suited to GDPR-sensitive workflows, and a
• Universal OpenAI connector for any OpenAI-compatible endpoint including Ollama, Groq, and Mistral.

All three are built on the same PHP AI Client SDK heading into WordPress Core 7.0, so your setup today carries forward without code changes after the upgrade.

Artur Piszek explains how he uses WordPress as a sync backend for Obsidian with PushMD. This plugin was created with Adam Zielinski, the maker of Playground. It allows you to treat your WordPress site as a git remote using the REST API. You can git clone your blog as plain .md files. Write in Obsidian and push updates to sync. This setup turns your site into a repository without needing an external service. It is also compatible with the upcoming Guidelines/Artifacts system in WordPress Core, which lets you store private notes and configurations there too.

Seth Rubenstein at Pew Research Center shared a preview of PRC Block Bits, now open-sourced on GitHub. Block Bits solves a specific gap between block bindings and RichText: where bindings replace an entire block’s content with dynamic data, a “bit” lets you embed small dynamic pieces — an inline icon, a copyright year, live text — right in the middle of a paragraph or heading. You register bits via a PHP and JS API, choose between a pure-PHP callback or Interactivity API strategy, and an editor toolbar dropdown handles insertion. Built-in bits for icons and copyright ship out of the box.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

Damir Tahiri of Rareview has open-sourced the WordPress starter theme that underpins every one of the agency’s builds. It’s Gutenberg-ready, ships with global style variables, includes a one-command Figma sync, and runs an interactive setup that renames and configures everything automatically. You can grab it on GitHub and use it as the foundation for your own projects.

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.

On the WordPress Developer blog, Róbert Mészáros shows you how to get started writing WordPress E2E tests with Playwright, using a book review site built on Block Bindings as the test subject. You’ll set up wp-env and Playwright, write your first test against the admin dashboard, then progress to inserting block variations, verifying patterns with aria snapshots, and testing front-end output by creating posts via the REST API.

Also on the WordPress Developer Blog, Felix Arntz, Senior Software Engineer at Vercel, walks you through building a provider-agnostic image generation plugin using WordPress 7.0’s built-in AI Client. You’ll see how a single wp_ai_client_prompt() call handles provider routing, how support checks gate your UI gracefully when no image-capable provider is configured, and how the REST API and Media Library integration come together. The full source code is on GitHub at wptrainingteam/ai-client-imagegen.

Sérgio Santos, Lead Engineer at 10up/Fueled, diagnoses three specific bugs you hit when using RichText outside a block — in InspectorControls or a Modal. The format toolbar fills route to the wrong slot, the inline toolbar is opt-in via inlineToolbar, and isSelected never turns true outside a block context. Each problem gets a targeted fix, and the pattern has since been packaged as a reusable component in 10up Block Components.

Eric Karkovack walks you through using my.WordPress.net as a safe AI sandbox — no production site at risk. You install WordPress in your browser in two steps, add the AI Assistant app from the apps menu, connect it to Anthropic, OpenAI, or a local Ollama model, and start prompting. It’s a low-stakes way to explore what AI can do inside WordPress before committing it to a live environment, though API costs from OpenAI or Anthropic still apply.

Fresh from last week’s WordCamp Portugal:

• Imran Sayed presented The Fastest Way to Build Gutenberg Blocks: Modern Tools, Scripts, and AI at WordCamp Portugal 2026. The talk cuts through the complexity of custom block development by focusing on practical, immediately usable workflows built around modern WordPress tools and scripts.
• Milana Cap presented WordPress Gems for Devs: Accessibility with Interactivity API and makes the case that it’s one of the most exciting APIs to land in WordPress in recent releases, with positive implications not just for developer experience but for performance and user experience too.
• Jorge Costa presented AI is in WordPress Core. Here’s How to Use It . The talk digs into the AI building blocks already shipped in WordPress Core — the WP AI Client, the Abilities API, and the MCP adapter, and shows you exactly how to bring AI-powered features into your own plugins, themes, and sites.
• JuanMa Garrido presented WordPress Development and Management with Claude Code. The talk treats Claude Code as a command center for WordPress work, generating block themes from HTML designs, querying a production site in natural language, installing plugins, and reading error logs, all from the terminal. Three concepts are at the core: Skills, MCP, and the Abilities API.

Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.

Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience.

Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.

For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com