WordPress Updates: The First Major Version Release For 2026 Due In April

WordPress version 7.0 is set to be released on April 9, 2026, as the first major update of the year. It focuses on structural improvements and provides the infrastructure that lets plugins connect to AI tools in a more consistent, manageable way.

It also increases the minimum system requirements for WordPress Hosting, gives the Admin Dashboard a fresh look, enhances the editor, and introduces real-time collaboration.

This article looks at what the latest WordPress updates are and how to get ready for launch day.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• WordPress 7.0 is not a feature-packed update but a reset for the platform’s infrastructure.
• The update doesn’t include built-in AI tools, but WordPress 7.0 makes it much easier to add them through plugins.
• The admin refresh and editor upgrades will streamline and enhance website and content management for most WordPress users.
• Support for PHP 7.2 and 7.3 has been dropped, and older versions of MySQL may cause performance issues; update to the recommended versions.
• The right WordPress Hosting makes updates safer, faster, and easier to manage as WordPress becomes more advanced.

Why 7.0’s WordPress Updates Are a Bigger Deal Than They Look

As a WordPress Hosting provider, we get excited about new major releases, and this one is a big deal.

WordPress version 7.0 arrives after an unusual year for the platform in 2025. According to the official roadmap, it will be released on April 9, 2026, at WordCamp Asia Contributor Day. The question is, will it be a return to the usual release schedule that hit a speed bump last year?

A bit of background before we get into the WordPress updates. Originally, 2025 had three major releases on the cards, but things didn’t go quite according to plan. Here are the highlights:

• The ongoing WP Engine lawsuit against Automattic (WordPress.com) and its CEO, Matt Mullenweg, took time and resources away from core software development.
• Automattic reduced its WordPress.org contribution – from 3,988 hours/week to roughly 45 (a 99% drop) & laid off +/- 16% of its workforce.
• Due to the above, they announced one major version release (usually three annually) of WordPress 6.8 in April 2025.
• Surprisingly, they then released WordPress 6.9 in December 2025.

In many ways, WordPress 7.0 is a foundation release with the core team and contributors describing it as “early-stage infrastructure”.

Instead of adding a load of features, although there are some very cool new ones, it focuses on improving the editing experience, by modernising things that haven’t changed in years and preparing the world’s most popular CMS for AI.

AI is Coming to WordPress – But Not in the Way You Think

One of the most talked-about topics for WordPress 7.0 is AI, but if you’re thinking we’ll be getting easy content generation and coding assistants on launch day, you will be disappointed.  

Instead, we are getting the underlying infrastructure built into the core software to connect AI to WordPress in a standardised, manageable way. No more cowboy coding and hoping your AI models don’t go rogue and hack the Pentagon or similar.

WordPress won’t be doing any em-dash-heavy content writing on the rapidly evolving world of “whatever” or creating pictures of people with too many fingers that make you want to take a shower. That’s still up to you and your prompts.

To use your favourite AIs, you’ll still need WordPress plugins. The difference is that those plugins will now have a common framework to run on when the update goes live.

AI Connectors and Their Key Components

You don’t have to become an expert overnight when it comes to how AI will connect to plugins, but having a basic understanding of the key components involved and what they do helps.

• The Abilities API:
  Added in WordPress 6.9, it standardised how plugins describe what they do in a language AI tools can understand.
• The MCP (Model Context Protocol) Adapter:
  Allows external tools like AI coding assistants to connect directly to WordPress.
• WP AI Client:
  A centralised system that lets WordPress communicate with AI models it supports. Currently, OpenAI, Gemini (Google), and Claude (Anthropic).

This approach separates how AI connects from what it does, giving you more control and avoiding forcing extra features on people who don’t want them.

This is a little more technical. In WordPress 7.0, you can manage your AI tools by going to Settings → Connectors. This section lets you store AI model API keys (OpenAI, Gemini, Claude) in your database. From there, plugins on your site can access them directly, meaning you no longer have to copy and paste the same keys into plugin settings over and over.

The AI Experiments Plugin

The AI Experiments plugin was officially integrated into the Connectors system on 6 March 2026. Although still in the development phase (v0.4.1), it is one of the best examples of what is possible with the Connectors infrastructure. Here are a few of its features that are available at the time of writing:

• Generate written content directly in the block editor via a new Generate button.
• Create new images directly in the Media Library, as well as variations of existing ones.
• Get AI-based suggestions for improvements to SEO, accessibility, and grammar with the new Notes API on individual Blocks.
• Type-ahead suggestions that predict sentences and auto-complete text as you write.
• AI moderation to flag spam or harmful comments on Posts or Forums.

The Admin Interface is Getting a Redesign

The WordPress admin interface hasn’t really had many updates to its look over the last 12 years; 7.0 is changing that at last. The redesign isn’t a complete overhaul; it keeps the familiar structure and layout while making WordPress finally feel like a single, coherent product.

• DataViews & DataForms: These new UI features add instant filtering and sorting on the Posts and Pages screens, making content management faster and more intuitive.
• Unified Design System: Fonts, colours, and spacing have been standardised with design tokens, making them consistent across the board.
• Refreshed Tables and Widgets: The new design focuses on readability with less visual noise thanks to cleaner table layouts and updated widgets.
• Standardised Form Elements: Every input field (dropdowns, checkboxes, etc.) from third-party plugins now shares a consistent look and feel instead of a mix of different ones.

Editor and Block Upgrades

Along with the admin dashboard redesign, editor upgrades are also coming with WordPress 7.0.

• Always-Iframed Post Editor: The editor now runs in its own separate frame, reducing conflicts between your block and theme style, meaning what you see in the editor is closer to what your visitors see on the front end.
• Viewport-Based Block Visibility:  You can now choose to show or hide specific blocks depending on the visitor’s screen size (viewport), so you can optimise content for mobile and desktop without duplicating pages and sections.
• Per-Block Custom CSS: Apply custom CSS directly to specific blocks without needing to edit theme files. This lets you fine-tune individual design elements without risking breaking your entire site.
• Enhanced Command Palette: This gives faster navigation in the editor with new keyboard shortcuts and smarter search results for more complex tasks.

Building on the editor upgrades (pun intended), blocks have also been updated, and new ones have been added, some of them actually removing the need for certain plugins:

• Tabs Block: New and long overdue. Create tabbed content sections directly in the editor without needing a plugin or complex shortcode, and you can put almost anything (images, buttons) inside the tabs.
• Responsive Grid Block: Layout management is now much more intuitive with the updated Grid block, giving more control over how content adjusts itself for different screen sizes, needing much less manual tweaking for mobile optimisation from desktop layouts.
• Breadcrumbs Block: Still in design, this one is worth talking about. Once complete, it adds breadcrumb navigation and pulls data correctly from your site hierarchy, potentially boosting SEO without needing plugins for that feature alone.
• Navigation Block: Continued improvements, including better handling of overlay navigation menus, offering smoother transitions and better customisation.
• Image Improvements: Aspect ratio controls are more consistent and now work across all alignment settings. Gallery captions also get an optional background blur effect.

Real-Time Collaboration and Editing

This is one of the brand-new WordPress features that teams will be excited about.

WP 7.0 introduces Google Docs-style co-editing, finally allowing multiple people to work on the same post at the same time, with live on-screen cursors showing exactly where changes are being made.

If you manage content with more than one person, you’ll already know this will make your life easier.

For years, version conflicts and accidental overwrites have been a headache. If two people opened the same post, they risked saving over each other’s work or being locked out entirely.

Real-time collaboration eliminates that risk by syncing every edit instantly and replacing the rather annoying “Take Over” system, which only allowed one person to edit at a time.

To streamline things even more, an enhanced Notes system lets people leave comments on specific blocks without changing the content, eliminating the usual back-and-forth by resolving suggestions directly within the editor.

Theme Changes

There are also some small but important changes to themes.  

Most notably, WordPress will no longer provide default link styling from the core software. Previously, if a theme didn’t explicitly define the style of a link, WordPress would fill the gap with its default setting. Moving forward, link styling is entirely your theme’s, i.e. your responsibility.

For most sites using a well-maintained, up-to-date theme, this change shouldn’t have any effect. But if your theme is outdated or uses core defaults, links could change colour or underline styling after you update.

AI-generated images are now permitted in the theme directory, for better or worse, depending on your point of view. If nothing else, you’ll have more options to choose from, and theme developers will have more free time.

Updated System Requirements

This is important, WordPress updates usually raise the minimum system requirements, and 7.0 is no exception. This part of WordPress releases is the most risky and the one most likely to catch you off guard if you don’t check.

Here is what you need:

• PHP: Minimum 7.4, recommended 8.3.
• Database: MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB 10.6+.

Support for versions 7.2 and 7.3 has been dropped, so if you haven’t upgraded your PHP in a while, now is the time to do so.

This matters, as PHP is the programming language WordPress runs on. Older versions are no longer maintained, which means they do not receive security patches. Running an outdated PHP version also affects performance; PHP 8.3 is much faster than 7.x for most WordPress workloads.

The database version requirement is unlikely to affect most sites, but older MySQL versions handle certain queries differently, which may cause compatibility and security issues.

Ensure that your web hosting supports PHP 8.3 and meets the updated MySQL database requirements.

How to Prepare Your Website for WordPress 7.0 with Domains.co.za

You don’t need to update as soon as it drops. In fact, it is usually better to wait a few days in case there are any issues that need to get patched. But it’s always better to prepare early and avoid problems later. Here’s how to get WordPress 7.0- ready.  

Check PHP Version

As mentioned earlier, you need to be running at least PHP 7.4, with PHP 8.3 being preferred. Login to your Domains.co.za account, select your WordPress Hosting domain and open thecPanel control panel. From there, you can check and update your PHP version in the Software section of your cPanel Dashboard.

Backup Site

As always, before doing any major WordPress update, backup your website files, database, and any custom code. If something goes wrong during the update, a recent backup is how you can recover your site and restore it to a stable version until you figure out what’s causing the issue.

Setup Staging

It’s best to test the update on an offline copy of your website before going ahead with it on the live one. With Domains.co.za WordPress Hosting, you can create a clone of your site to ensure that the update works in a safe staging environment and sort out any bugs beforehand.

Audit Plugins and Theme

Check if your active plugins and theme are compatible with the latest WordPress version on your staging site and look for any broken features or theme conflicts. Outdated plugins are also the most common cause of security breaches. If you see one that hasn’t been updated in a while, it’s time to find and install a plugin that does the same thing, only better.

Check Link Styling

After applying the update to your staging site, check that links across your site still display correctly in terms of colour and formatting because they will no longer be replaced by defaults from the WordPress core.

PRO TIP:

Before the official release, test with the beta version to ensure that your hosting meets the new system requirements and your site displays and functions as normal.

For more information on the official road map and where you can get the beta version, visit WordPress.org.

WordPress Hosting from Domains.co.za

As WordPress updates evolve, and in the case of what 7.0 has to offer, it looks like the next release could be even bigger, new features, AI architecture, higher system requirements, and more releases mean that your site needs stable, high-performance hosting tailored to the platform’s needs.

The right provider and setup can be the difference between a smooth update and a potential catastrophe.

With WordPress Hosting from Domains.co.za, backups and core updates are done automatically. The Smart Update tool clones your website and performs a full WordPress update.

It then compares all pages to verify compatibility with the new software version, while Acronis backups keep your files and database safe, giving you an easy restore point.

The included WP Toolkit and cPanel control let you manage updates, security, plugins, site settings and more all in one place, backed by our expert customer support team.

This saves time and gives you less to worry about, especially during major WordPress releases like 7.0, not to mention stopping you from having to constantly fix site breaks and crashes on the fly.

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