WordPress 7.1 Beta is now available for testing on VIP. This is the first release of the WordPress 7.1 development cycle and can now be deployed to all non-production WordPress environments.
The current target for the final release is August 19, 2026.
Key dates & recommended qctions
- July 17: Beta 1 available for testing on WordPress VIP.
- Before August 5: test the Beta on non-production sites and report any issues.
- August 5: Release Candidate available for testing on WordPress VIP.
- Before August 19: test the Release Candidate on non-production sites and turn on Managed Updates if everything is working as expected.
- August 19: WordPress 7.1 release.
Note that the release schedule can change materially over the next few weeks
What’s new in WordPress 7.1
WordPress 7.1 brings a round of refinements to media handling, collaboration, the editing interface, and the block library. Here’s a preview of what’s coming — keep in mind that features might get dropped or added until the final release on August 19:
Media updates
- Client-side media processing: Images are now decoded, resized, and encoded locally in the browser before upload
- Media Editor Modal: A new modal consolidates cropping, rotation, flip, zoom, and metadata editing for the Image, Site Logo, and Cover blocks.
- Smarter galleries: A new Dynamic Gallery mode automatically displays all media attached to a post, and a new Attachments category in the media inserter makes managing those attachments easier.
Interface updates
- Persistent toolbar: The admin bar now stays visible inside the block editor
- Admin color scheme in the Site Editor
- Commands in the Command Palette are now grouped into Suggestions, Recent, and Results sections, with recently used commands remembered across sessions.
- Untitled posts show an excerpt in the Posts list
Editing & collaboration
- Responsive styling: Blocks can be styled differently per breakpoint directly in the editor.
- Interactive states styling: Button hover, focus, and active states can now be styled without custom CSS, globally or per block instance.
- Block Notes can now be attached to specific words or span multiple blocks, and support rich text, @mentions, and multiple threads on the same block.
- New blocks: Playlist Block, Tabs Block,
- Block updates: “Mark as decorative” toggle in Image Blocks, background gradient and image support for text blocks, editable blocks inside Custom HTML, registered shortcodes now transform cleanly into their matching blocks.
- Visual Revisions improvements: autosave notices now open the visual revisions view directly, and autosave rows are clearly badged in the timeline.
How to test the upgrade on a local environment
The quickest way to test locally is to use the VIP Local Development Environment.
To update an existing environment:
vip dev-env update -w=7.1 --slug=mytestsite
To create a new one:
vip dev-env create -w=7.1 --slug=mytestsite
How to test the upgrade on a VIP Platform environment
You can update your non-production environments by running the trunk version of WordPress from within the Software Management section of the VIP Dashboard or by running the vip config software update command with VIP-CLI.
For example:
vip @mytestsite.develop config software update wordpress trunk