WordPress 7.0 Release Candidate 3

[Wordpress]

The third Release Candidate (“RC3”) for WordPress 7.0 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC3 on a test server and site.

Reaching this phase of the release cycle is an important milestone. As always, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 7.0 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 7.0 RC3 in four ways:

Plugin	Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.)
Direct Download	Download the RC3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
Command Line	Use this WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=7.0-RC3
WordPress Playground	Use the WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser.  No setup is required – just click and go!

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.0 is May 20, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who helps with testing!

Please continue checking the Make WordPress Core blog for 7.0-related posts in the coming weeks for more information.

What’s in WordPress 7.0 RC3?

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? Take a look at the WordPress 7.0 Developer Notes. For technical information related to the 143+ issues addressed since RC2, you can browse the following links:

• Closed 7.0 WordPress Core Trac tickets since March 26, 2026
• 7.0 Gutenberg commits since March 26, 2026

Note: Real Time Collaboration will not be included in the 7.0 release and will be re-evaluated during the 7.1 release cycle. Because of this, this RC3 version is no longer considered a “new Beta 1”.

How you can contribute

WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can get involved with the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

Get involved in testing

Testing for issues is crucial to the development of any software. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. Your help testing the WordPress 7.0 RC3 version is key to ensuring that the final release is the best it can be.

This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 7.0. 

For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

If you encounter a potential bug or issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs. 

Curious about testing releases in general?  Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Update your theme or plugin

For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 7.0 beta releases. If you haven’t yet, make sure to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 7.0.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Test on your hosting platforms

Web hosts provide vital infrastructure for supporting WordPress and its users. Testing on hosting systems helps inform the development process while ensuring that WordPress and hosting platforms are fully compatible, free of errors, optimized for the best possible user experience, and that updates roll out to customer sites without issue.

Thank you to the Hosts who helped test variations of new RTC architecture: Kinsta, Bluehost, GoDaddy, WordPress.com, XServer, and Ionos, and to the hosts who participate in distributed testing regularly.

Want to test WordPress on your hosting system? Get started with configuring distributed hosting tests here.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? मराठी? ಕನ್ನಡ?  You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. This release milestone (RC3) marks the hard string freeze point of the 7.0 release cycle.

An RC3 haiku

By the tides of sea,

where wind moves gently through trees,

sprouts up RC3.

Props to @desrosj, @peterwilsoncc for proofreading and review.

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