Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the executive director of WordPress, released a proposed schedule that encompasses three significant core releases by 2024. Although the dates are not final, they have been chosen to avoid WordPress events and significant holidays.
WordPress 6.5, the first release of the year, is slated for March 26. 6.6 and 6.7 are anticipated for July and early November, respectively.
While WordPress had officially wrapped up Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project—which was centered on on-site customization—Phase 6.4 was mostly concerned with expanding the capabilities of the block and site editors and also included some preliminary investigations into Phase 3 (collaboration). 2024 releases will fully embrace collaborative features.
Chomphosy stated, “I anticipate that 6.5 and 6.7 will be focused on those Collaborative features given that 2024 will hold the bulk of the work for Phase 3.” “As requested earlier this year, I would like to suggest that 6.6 be held especially for software maintenance and general polishing.”
Regarding the schedule and content of the upcoming releases, Chomphosy requested comments. It’s unclear how much of the Phase 3 work will be completed in time for 6.5, so WordPress core committer Pascal Birchler proposed switching the priorities for 6.5 and 6.6. Given the things that were omitted from the prior edition, the suggestion also makes sense.
The release team of WordPress 6.4 was forced to abandon the flagship typographic management capabilities, which are expected to appear in 6.5. This contains server-side @font-face CSS creation and printing, as well as a Font Library that will let users explore a font library in the admin panel in a manner akin to managing media. It will function as an expandable library for plugin writers, independent of the active theme.
