The WordPress 7.1 release cycle moves into its testing phase this month. Beta 1 is scheduled for July 15, with betas following weekly (Beta 2 on July 22, Beta 3 on July 29), a Release Candidate on August 5, and the final release on August 19, 2026, timed to WordCamp US. The cycle now has a release squad, a release party schedule, and a bug scrub schedule in place.
Separately, WordPress 7.0.1 shipped on July 9 as a bug-fix-only release, bundling 13 Core tickets and 13 Gutenberg fixes. On the plugin side, Gutenberg 23.4 (June 17) and 23.5 (July 1) both landed in the window, and 23.5 raises the plugin’s minimum required WordPress version to 6.9.
Responsive styling is ready for testing
After months of in-progress mentions, responsive style states got an official Call for Testing on July 3. Blocks can now be styled per viewport directly in the editor, and Gutenberg 23.5 replaces the old fixed desktop/tablet/mobile preview toggle with a unified, freely resizable device preview. The useResizeCanvas() hook is deprecated and no longer functional, while getDeviceType() and setDeviceType() still work. Blocks using standard block supports get responsive styles automatically; blocks with custom controls do not. Theme and plugin developers who ship custom style controls or lean on theme.json presets should run through the call for testing and report breakage.
Two merge proposals to watch
A merge proposal aims to add the first practical abilities to Core’s Abilities API (shipped as infrastructure in WordPress 6.9): core/read-settings, core/read-content, and core/read-users, all read-only and built on existing capability checks. A second proposal would introduce a wp_knowledge custom post type as a central place for site knowledge (guidelines, memories, notes), with REST routes and dedicated capabilities, designed to have zero footprint on sites that don’t use it. To make 7.1 this proposal needs to land by Beta 1 on July 15.
Action items for plugin and theme developers
- Test React 19 now: Gutenberg 23.4 ships an experimental gutenberg-react-19 flag that swaps in React 19 at runtime, simulating what plugins will face when Core eventually upgrades. Enable it under Gutenberg’s Experiments screen and watch the console for compatibility warnings.
- Check the 40px component prop: Starting with TextControl on June 23, roughly 20 components (including BoxControl, RangeControl, FormTokenField, and CustomSelectControl) hard-deprecate the __next40pxDefaultSize prop for WordPress 7.1. The 40px size becomes permanent and the prop becomes a no-op; UIs without the prop should be reviewed against the new default sizing.
- Update icon styling: All 330 icons in @wordpress/icons v15 now declare fill=\”currentColor\”, a breaking change for anyone styling icons with CSS fill. Use the CSS color property instead.
With Beta 1 arriving within days of this roundup, the coming weeks are the window for plugin and theme maintainers to catch compatibility issues while they’re still cheap to fix.