The plan and schedule for WordPres 5.0

Ever since WordCamp Europe 2018 in Belgrade, people have been anxiously waiting for the release schedule of WordPress 5.0. Specifically, when will Gutenberg finally been added to core.

Well, the wait is over. Matt Mullenweg published a plan for WordPress 5.0 over at the Make WordPress Core blog. This is what he had to say about it:

The adoption of the Gutenberg plugin, at 490 thousand active sites and counting, far exceeds pre-release testing of anything that has ever come into core. If we keep the 5.0 release to strictly 4.9.8 + Gutenberg, we will have a release that is both major and a non-event in terms of new code. It’s all battle-tested. In some ways 5.0 is already de facto out in the wild, with some forward-looking hosts already installing and activating Gutenberg for new installs.

With the Gutenberg plugin having such a high adaptation rate, it’s safe to start working towards a release schedule, Mullenweg reasons. The goal now is to have a release candidate ready in about a month. Meaning, early November.

Obviously, the beta releases and related testing schedule can make the actual release of WordPress 5.0 later than anticipated, but it looks like we’ll have Gutenberg part of WordPress Core before the end of this year.

Additionally, Mullenweg asked several members of the WordPress Community to help lead the critical focuses required for a smooth and successful release on various subjects such as Media, Merge, Project Management, Design, REST API and more.

A second post following Mullenweg’s post by Gary Pendergast goes into more detail what the release schedule of WordPress 5.0 is going to look like. The first beta is scheduled to be released on the 19th of October and after a full month of testing and release candidates, we should have WordPress available November 19th. 

Having Gutenberg finally be available for everyone with WordPress 5.0 is pretty exciting news if you ask me. How excited are you?