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The WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development team builds WordPress! Follow this site for general updates, status reports, and the occasional code debate. There’s lots of ways to contribute:

Found a bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority.? Create a ticket in the bug tracker.

Want to contribute? Get started quickly with tickets marked as good first bugs for new contributors or join a bug scrub. There’s more on the reports page, like patches needing testing, and on feature projects page.

Other questions? Here is a detailed handbook for contributors, complete with tutorials.

Support for PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 5 will be dropped in WordPress 6.3, scheduled for release on August 8th 2023. The new minimum supported version of PHP will be 7.0.0. The recommended version of PHP remains at 7.4 or greater.

WordPress currently supports PHP version 5.6.20 or greater. The minimum supported version was last adjusted in WordPress 5.2 in 2019, and since then usage of PHP 5.6 has dropped to 3.9% of monitored WordPress installations as of July 2023.

There’s no concrete usage percentage that a PHP version must fall below before support in WordPress is dropped, but historically the project maintainers have used 5% as the baseline. Now that usage of PHP 5.6 is well below that at 3.9% and dropping by around 0.1% every few weeks, plans to increase the minimum supported PHP version can move forward.

The benefits to increasing the minimum supported PHP version manifest over time and in multiple places, including within the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party and theme ecosystem, within the long term perception of the WordPress project, within developer relations, and over time within the WordPress codebase and its developer tooling.

Discussion around this minimum version bump can be found here on the Trac ticket.

What about PHP 8?

Support for PHP 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2 in WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. is very good, and a proposal for the criteria for removing the “beta” support label for each new PHP version has been published.

What about security support?

Sites that are running PHP 5.6 will remain on the 6.2 branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch". of WordPress which will continue receiving security updates as it does currently. The current security policy is to support WordPress versions 4.1 and greater.

What about the GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ plugin?

The Gutenberg plugin, which is used for development of the blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. editor, has a separate release schedule from WordPress core and officially supports the two most recent releases of WordPress. This means that the Gutenberg plugin will continue to support PHP 5.6 for the time being, most likely until WordPress 6.4 is released. See this issue on the Gutenberg repo for further information.

Going forward

There are no plans to bump the minimum supported PHP version on a schedule. The core team will continue to monitor usage of PHP versions and work with the hosting team to encourage users and hosting companies to upgrade their versions of PHP as swiftly as possible. The 5% usage baseline will continue to be used for the foreseeable future.

The PHP usage stats as of July 2023 look like this:

8.2: 2.11%
8.1: 9.37%
8.0: 14.05%
7.4: 51.13%
7.3: 7.92%
7.2: 6.29%
7.1: 1.38%
7.0: 2.05%
5.6: 3.93%

Update PHP today

If you need more information about PHP or how to update it, check out this support article that explains more and guides you through the process.

Props to all those that have contributed to this discussion recently. Thanks to those who provided feedback and proof-reading of this post: @azaozz @chanthaboune @flixos90 @hellofromtonya @javiercasares @joemcgill @jorbin @jrf @peterwilsoncc @sergeybiryukov

#php

masteradhoc 7:27 pm on July 5, 2023

A big +1 from my side. Great to hear WordPress soon only supports PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 7 & newer.
Jon Brown 3:58 am on July 6, 2023

Delightful news!

FWIW, while I HUGE advocate for bumping up minimum PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher versions, I do think it makes sense to do these in baby steps and not jump straight to PHP 7.2 now. In part because we’re bumping this so close to WP 6.3 freeze and release.

It’s nice to see how much old crudCRUD Create, read, update and delete, the four basic functions of storing data. (More on Wikipedia.) will get removed with min 7.0.

I think it makes sense however to then immediately propose WP 6.4 jump to PHP 7.2 AND then use the entire release cycle to modernize coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. code as makes sense.

7.0 doesn’t really have a ton of modernization opportunities, whereas 7.2 and then 7.4 certainly each do offer a lot of opportunities for code modernization.

I know that might not happen… but I’m hopeful.
- Javier Casares 4:07 am on July 6, 2023
  
  This is a great oportunity to see if announcing the change and getting out of “betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. support” up to PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 8.1, everybody set up their WordPress 6.3 with PHP 8.1, so we can reduce the PHP 7.x use and do an update at WordPress 6.4 for PHP 7.2, and then WordPress 6.5/6.6 to PHP 7.4. That should make things easy in the future to be in a PHP -5 versions roadmap (for example, that should mean with WordPress 6.3 support should support PHP 8.0, 8.1 and 8.2, the actual ones, and 2 older versions, PHP 7.3 and PHP 7.4, reasonably).
  - Jon Brown 1:40 pm on July 6, 2023
    
    Anecdotal, but we run most sites on 8.1 or 8.2. We still have about dozen or so sites still on 7.4 though. Invariably it’s because some no longer supported plug-in on those sites isn’t compatible with 8 and we’re slow to replace the plug-in, hoping the author will reappear and update it. It’s impractical to take over maintenance of the plug-ins ourselves in these cases, so we’ll either find something else, or replace it with slimed down custom code thst just does the one thing we need from the plug-in.
    
    Anyway, I do think WP policy ought to beso something like “support a PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher version 1 year after EOL” or something else concrete like that, instead of this fuzzy “5% of sites, sort of but not really” number. I think once we drop 5.6 we’ll get there though. 5.6 was such a uniquely sticky version. 7.4 may be similar, we’ll see.
Rene Hermenau 10:43 am on July 6, 2023

August 8th, definately a good day to celebrate.
Hareesh S 7:19 pm on July 11, 2023

Great news, finally! 🙂
The ecosystem will benefit greatly from this decision, although I would have appreciated a not-so-last-minute decision to drop support.
michaelwp85 7:50 pm on July 21, 2023

That’s good to hear! I would very much like to see WordPress join the PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher cadence for active support similar to PHP Unit. Old PHP versions are holding back progress in my opinion. 7.4 is already EOL I think the current recommended version should be >= 8 or even 8.1 looking at the limited time left on 8.0.

When WP actively keeps supporting ancient versions so will pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party developers. I just migrated 300+ sites to 8.2 and the amount of plugins stuck on old PSR packages made me really sad, had to patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. 50 sites.
bjf2000 5:25 pm on August 31, 2023

What I can’t find answered anywhere: does an automatic update to 6.3 take into account the PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher requirement and not do it until it’s met, or does it just go ahead and do it, resulting in a site saying something like “Your server is running PHP version 5.6.40 but WordPress 6.3.0 requires at least 7.0.0”?