The WordPress roadmap is always evolving and changing as the years go by, as new projects take focus and release cycles move from the planning stages to active development, testing, bug fixing and beyond. We like to familiarise ourselves with the upcoming roadmap at the beginning of each year, so we know when to expect major updates and start to form an idea about the biggest releases in the WordPress calendar.
This year the focus is on Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project, which was imagined by Matt Mullenweg to revolutionise the way WordPress users create and manage content. One of the key goals is to make it attainable for users to share engaging, attractive web content, regardless of technical experience. Phase 1 of Gutenberg was released in 2018 as part of WordPress version 5.0 and the hope is that during 2020 those working on the project will be focusing on full-site editing.
Gutenberg aside, there are already a number of new releases with tentative dates scheduled for the 2020-2021 period. Of course, dates are all subject to change but the current projected dates are as follows:
- WordPress 5.4 – March 2020
- WordPress 5.5 – August 2020
- WordPress 5.6 – December 2020
- WordPress 5.7 – March 2021
- WordPress 5.8 – June 2021
- WordPress 5.9 – September 2021
- WordPress 6.0 – December 2021
The plan for 2020 and beyond is to freeze all new features in the month leading up to a release, so the team involved can focus solely on fixing bugs and resolving any performance issues raised in testing.
To stay up to date with the release schedule and the planned dates for each new version, you can keep an eye on the 2020-2021 release calendar over at Make WordPress Core.
Looking beyond 2020, the long term WordPress roadmap currently focuses on Phase 3 and Phase 4 of Gutenberg. Currently, Phase 3 is set to focus on multi-user editing and collaborative functionality, while Phase 4 will contain the long-awaited and much-requested support for multilingual sites.
The WordPress roadmap is an ever-changing beast so we recommend visiting the roadmap hub throughout the year to stay up to date on planned release dates and project focuses.
