WordPress is continually under development. Currently, work is underway on Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project. The Gutenberg project is a reimagination of the way we manage content on the web. Its goal is to broaden access to web presence, which is a foundation of successful modern businesses. Phase 1 was the new block editor, which was released in WordPress 5.0, you can see that in action here. Throughout 2020 there will be a focus on full site editing as we continue to progress through Phase 2.
For 2019 the project also has the following 9 priorities, as outlined in this post by project lead Matt Mullenweg:
- Creating a block for navigation menus.
- Port all existing widgets to blocks.
- Upgrade the widgets-editing areas and the Customizer to support blocks.
- Provide a way for themes to visually register content areas, and expose them in Gutenberg.
- Merge the site health check plugin into Core, to assist with debugging and encourage good software hygiene.
- Provide a way for users to opt-in to automatic plugin and theme updates.
- Provide a way for users to opt-in to automatic updates of major Core releases.
- Build a WordPress.org directory for discovering blocks, and a way to seamlessly install them.
- Form a Triage team to tackle our 6,500 open issues on Trac.
Want to get involved? Head on over to Make WordPress! We can always use more people to help translate, design, document, develop and market WordPress.
Currently planned releases
Here are the current planned releases, and links to their respective milestones in our issue tracker. Any projected dates are for discussion and planning purposes, and will be firmed up as we get closer to release.
| Version | Planned |
|---|---|
| 5.4 (Trac) | مارچ 2020 |
| 5.5 | آگسٽ 2020 |
| 5.6 | ڊسمبر 2020 |
| 5.7 | مارچ 2021 |
| 5.8 | جُون 2021 |
| 5.9 | سيپٽمبر 2021 |
| 6.0 | ڊسمبر 2021 |
For more information on the planned release schedule, please read the Make WordPress Core post about the tentative release calendar for 2020-2021.
The month prior to a release new features are frozen and the focus is entirely on ensuring the quality of the release by eliminating bugs and profiling the code for any performance issues.
You can see an overview of previous releases on our history page.
Long term roadmap
While we expect to need most or all of 2019 to finish phase 2 of Gutenberg, there are already plans for Phase 3 and 4. Phase 3 will focus on collaboration and multi-user editing. Phase 4 will contain support for multilingual sites.