WordPress 7.0 is out: the 7 highlights of this release
On May 20th, 2026, the next major release of WordPress came out: WordPress 7.0. While previous releases focused on improving the block editor, this release takes it to a new level. It pushes the platform into the next phase of its roadmap with smarter workflows and a more app-like experience. So, let’s dive into what’s new and what features are interesting for you.
A modern admin experience
Although it’s a seemingly small thing, another cool thing to mention is the new color palette. As you can see in the screenshot above, the default color scheme has changed. The palette previously known as ‘Modern’ is now the new default, better aligning the admin with the visual direction of the block and site editor. If you preferred the old look, don’t worry, it’s still available under your profile preferences, now listed as ‘Fresh’.
Overall, these improvements and others give a fresh look and feel to the backend of your website. With the intent of making WordPress feel less like a traditional CMS and more like a modern web app.
Revisions are now more visual
Whenever you need to check or restore an earlier version of a page, the revisions in WordPress help you do so. These give you an idea of what has been changed on your page and when. Now, WordPress 7.0 makes this even easier with visual revisions instead of the raw text shown until now.
The revisions feature can be found in the same spot as before, and now, when you click it, it takes you to a preview of your page, where you can use the slider at the top to view earlier versions. The slider also shows you the date and time of the change. When looking at an earlier version of the page, additions are shown in green, changed sections in yellow, and deleted sections in red. Allowing you to locate the changes made right away.
As before, this allows you to quickly restore previous versions of a page, find the source of layout issues and review updates. This visualization of the revisions makes it easier to do so, as you won’t have to dive into the text to figure out what changed. You’ll notice it right away when sliding between revisions.
New blocks in the block editor
As expected, the block editor has also gotten some new additions with the release of WordPress 7.0. For starters, the new Breadcrumbs block lets you add breadcrumbs to your pages, improving navigation on your site. When added, it automatically adds the correct breadcrumb path to the top of your page, but it also gives you options to customize it. The other new block in this release is the Icon block. This allows you to add icons to your pages from a directory of icons added to the backend.
There are also some improvements to existing blocks, such as the Grid Block and Cover block. The Grid block used to have an Auto/Manual toggle, but this has now been replaced by several options to help you set the responsiveness of the block and columns shown. The Cover Block now includes the option to use embedded videos as the background, so you can display videos from platforms like YouTube there. These new blocks and improvements continue to further reduce the need for plugins and custom work to achieve the desired design.
Better responsive design controls
Designing for mobile just got a little bit easier. This latest version of WordPress introduces viewport-based controls, allowing you to show or hide blocks depending on the user’s screen size. Simply go to the block, click ‘Show’ in the toolbar and select which devices should show the block (desktop, tablet, or mobile). This will automatically hide it on the devices that you don’t select. This allows you to fine-tune your design for different devices and build responsive designs without using custom CSS. A big win for anyone building sites without relying heavily on code.
Smarter pattern editing
Patterns and templates now come with different editing modes to make changes without accidentally messing up the design. When selecting a pattern, the List View will show you all the text and image elements in that pattern. This allows you to focus on the content-focused elements and change those where needed. However, when you click ‘Edit pattern’, it will also show you the remaining elements (design elements such as spacers), so you can still adjust those. This helps users focus on content optimization, while still giving the option to make changes to the design or layout if needed.
This new approach makes it a bit easier to customize patterns to fit specific use cases across your website.
Connect to AI tools of your choice
WordPress 7.0 doesn’t come with any AI-powered tools, but it is laying some groundwork. It comes with a Connectors section below Settings in your WordPress backend. Here you can connect to external integrations, including AI providers or agents. This allows you to connect to Claude, Gemini, OpenAI, and more. You can search the directory if the integration you’re looking for isn’t listed right away.
This gives you one central place to maintain any integrations that your website or plugins need to connect to by API keys or other credentials. In addition, this gives developers a future-proof ecosystem and standardized framework to work with.
A new list filter for plugins
WordPress 7.0 adds a filter that allows plugins to register custom tabs on the Plugins screen. This enables grouping plugins under a custom tab with a proper label. For example, thanks to this feature we were able to add a dedicated “Yoast” tab on the Plugins screen. This groups all Yoast plugins on that website in one view, making it easier for site admins to check versions, manage activation, and keep the overview of their Yoast suite.
Final thoughts
As always, these are just a few highlights. New blocks, smarter workflows, a modern admin and AI foundations. There’s a lot more we haven’t discussed here. For example, performance was not ignored in this release. Particularly, client-side media processing (faster uploads, less server strain), continued improvements to block rendering, and responsiveness. These changes help WordPress scale better, especially for media-heavy sites. It’s also worth noting that WordPress 7.0 raises the minimum PHP version to 7.4.
Still to come: real-time collaboration
Originally, the real-time collaboration feature was going to be shipped in this release. But a short while back it was decided to postpone the release of this feature to ensure the stability of this release. This feature will probably be part of a future release.
But for now, we can get going with the new features in WordPress highlighted above! So, go update to the latest version or dive into more details in the release post on WordPress.org.
