The WordPress core development team builds WordPress! Follow this site for general updates, status reports, and the occasional code debate. There’s lots of ways to contribute:
WordPress 5.5 will be the second major release of 2020 and aims to include a navigation menus block, automatic updates for plugins and themes, a block directory, XML sitemaps, lazy loading, and update Gutenberg to the latest release version as we continue to focus in 2020 on full site editing via Gutenberg. Matt Mullenweg is the Release Lead, Jake Spurlock is the Release Coordinator, and David Baumwald is returning as Triage PM. Joining the are Core Tech Sergey Biryukov, Editor Tech Ella van Durpe, Editor Design Michael Arestad, Media Tech Andrew Ozz, Accessibility Tech JB Audras, Documentation Coordinator Justin Ahinon, and the Marketing/Comms Coordinator is Mary Baum. All release decisions will ultimately be this release teams’ to make and communicate while gathering input from the community. There will NOT be a new bundled theme included in 5.5.
Beta 1, begin writing Dev Notes and About page, and last chance to merge feature projects. (Slack archive, Zip download)
From this point on, no more commits for any new enhancements or feature requests in this release cycle, only bug fixes and inline documentation. Work can continue on enhancements/feature requests not completed and committed by this point, and can be picked up for commit again at the start of the WordPress 5.6 development cycle.
Release candidate 1, publish Field Guide with Dev Notes, commit About page, begin drafting release post, and hard string freeze. (Slack archive, Zip download)
4 August 2020 (+1w)
Release candidate 2, update About page images, and continue drafting release post. (Slack archive, Zip download)
10 August 2020 (+6d)
Dry run for release of WordPress 5.5 and 24 hour code freeze. (Slack archive)
11 August 2020 (+1d)
Target date for release of WordPress 5.5. 🎉
To get involved in WordPress core development, head on over to Trac and pick a 5.5 ticket. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook. Get your patches done and submitted as soon as possible, then help find people to test the patches and leave feedback on the ticket. Patches for enhancements will not be committed after the dates posted above, so that we can all focus on squashing bugs and deliver the most bug-free WordPress ever.
