WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy has published a proposed schedule for 2024 that includes three major core releases. The dates have not yet been set in stone but have been planned to avoid major holidays and WordPress events.
The first release of the year, WordPress 6.5, is scheduled for March 26, followed by 6.6 in July and 6.7 in early November.
Although WordPress had officially concluded Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project (focused on Site Customiziation), 6.4 was focused primarily on extending existing features in the block and site editors alongside initial explorations of Phase 3 (Collaboration). Releases in 2024 will go full force into collaboration features.
“Given that 2024 will hold a bulk of the work for Phase 3, I expect that 6.5 and 6.7 will be focused on those Collaborative features,” Chomphosy said. “I would like to propose that 6.6 be held specifically for maintenance and general polish of the software (as was wished for earlier this year).”
Chomphosy asked for feedback on the timing and focus of the planned releases. WordPress core committer Pascal Birchler suggested swapping the focuses for 6.5 and 6.6, as it’s not clear how much of of Phase 3 work will be ready in time for 6.5. The suggestion also makes sense in light of the features that didn’t make the cut for the previous release.
WordPress 6.4’s release squad had to punt the planned typography management flagship features and these are anticipated to land in 6.5. This includes a Font Library and server-side @font-face CSS generation and printing, which will allow users to browse a library of fonts in the admin, similar to managing media. It will not be dependent on the theme that is activated but will be a library that is extensible for plugin developers.
The discussion regarding 2024 releases is still ongoing in the comments of the post. WordPress users may also hear more about what’s coming in the next year during Matt Mullenwg’s State of the Word address, which will be delivered live from Madrid on December 11, 2023.
