WordPress 7.0 features, beta testing, AI Connectors, and migration guidance.
WordPress 7 is a major milestone. AI Connectors, the Abilities API, a reworked admin experience. It's the biggest architectural shift since Gutenberg landed in version 5.0, and it's going to change how developers build for WordPress.
We're tracking the development from beta through stable release, testing builds on our hosting platform and writing up what works, what's changed, and what you should prepare for before upgrading.
WordPress 7.0 launched on 20 May 2026 without real-time collaboration, which Matt Mullenweg pulled on 8 May. Here's what shipped, what got cut, and our hands-on findings from running RC5 on two of our own sites for the 24 hours before launch.
WordPress 7.0 didn't ship on 9 April. The core team extended the cycle to redesign the database layer for real-time collaboration, then pulled real-time collaboration entirely on 8 May. The release shipped on 20 May with block-level Notes in its place. This is the record of the database rework that happened anyway.
The WordPress Foundation has announced that WordPress 7.0 will require a physical USB-C hardware key plugged into your computer to access wp-admin. Four pricing tiers start at £29.99. The Agency Bundle weighs 1.4kg. We have questions.
The plugin once called AI Experiments hit a stable 1.0 and jumped from 7 features to 18. We reinstalled it at 1.0.1 on WordPress 7.0, added the three provider plugins for Claude, Gemini and OpenAI, and tested everything: the editorial tools, alt text, comment moderation, and the two new governance features that matter most if you run client sites.
WordPress 7.0 ships on 20 May 2026 with the AI Client, block-level Notes, DataViews and PHP 7.4 as the new minimum. Every blog covers the features. Nobody is asking whether your hosting can actually handle them. Here's the WordPress 7.0 hosting readiness checklist your provider hopes you won't read.
I installed WordPress 7 Beta 2 on a staging server and went looking for the AI. What I found was both less exciting and more important than I expected. Here's what the Connectors page actually does, with code examples.
