This year is set to be transformative for WordPress, yet many decision-makers risk overlooking the immense opportunities ahead. Our new “WordPress in 2025” report highlights why WordPress should be a cornerstone of your long-term strategy. Stay ahead of the curve—read the report now to see how WordPress can drive growth and innovation for your business in the years to come.
Some of the key points we explore:
As proprietary “next-gen” CMS hype fizzles out and enterprise budgets shift priorities, open-source CMSs like WordPress are primed to gain ground in the commoditized CMS space. WordPress’ maturity and extensibility provide a high starting point for innovation.
WordPress’ Block Editor has seen tremendous investment, amassing over 34,000 commits – more than entire competing CMS projects. New capabilities like Full Site Editing (FSE) give enterprises unprecedented ability to enable no-code site building.
Just as being the first user-friendly publishing tool propelled WordPress’ initial growth, AI presents a similar opportunity. WordPress’ contributor community can build not just AI features, but an exciting multi-agent, LLM-agnostic ecosystem representing an intelligent content operating system.
Pure-play headless vendors are working backwards to add no-code editing, while WordPress has long supported robust headless capabilities alongside its mature editor. For complex sites, hybrid architectures leveraging both are the pragmatic path forward.
About the report’s author, Noel Tock — Having built his first website back in 1995, Noel has long been watching the evolution of the CMS space. As a co-owner at one of the leading enterprise WordPress agencies, Human Made, his belief in the power of open source is as great as ever. Human Made is a WordPress VIP Gold Partner specializing in DXP, headless, AI and more.
The first major WordCamp of the year is here! WordCamp Asia 2025 lands in Manila, Philippines, from February 20-22, bringing together open source enthusiasts, developers, and WordPress professionals from across the region—and the world.
With three packed days of learning, networking, and collaboration, this year’s event promises fresh insights, dynamic discussions, and plenty of opportunities to connect.
Solutions spotlight
Throughout the conference days, multiple presentations will focus on the solutions provided by our amazing sponsors. This is a great opportunity to learn more about their initiatives and solutions.
The main conference, which will be held on February 21-22, will feature a lineup of notable keynote speakers, including digital innovation leaders and open-source advocates. Attendees can expect diverse sessions on business strategy, development of best practices, and technical advancements.
For those looking to sharpen their skills, presentations will dive deep into topics like SEO for WordPress, performance optimization, and AI-powered content creation. Plus, don’t miss the electrifying WordPress Speed Build Battle, where developers race to create stunning sites in record time.
YouthCamp
On February 22, WordCamp Asia 2025 will host YouthCamp, a pre-registered event designed to introduce young minds to WordPress and its endless possibilities. This initiative aims to engage the next generation of WordPress users, developers, and contributors through hands-on activities and interactive sessions
Closing Q&A with Matt Mullenweg
WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg will wrap up the event with a live Q&A session on February 22. Whether attending in person or tuning in online, you can catch his insights live on the WordPress YouTube channel at 4:00 p.m. Philippine Time (08:00 UTC).
After party
As the sun sets on WordCamp Asia 2025, the excitement continues with the After Party (theme: Island Vibe)! Get ready to experience the vibrant spirit of the Philippines with a lively gathering at The Forum at PICC. Expect a night filled with great conversations, music, and a celebration of the WordPress community.
As always, be part of the conversation! Whether you’re attending in Manila or following along online, share your experiences using #WCAsia and #WordPress.
In order to give myself and the many tired volunteers around WordPress.org a break for the holidays, we’re going to be pausing a few of the free services currently offered:
New account registrations on WordPress.org (clarifying so press doesn’t confuse this: people can still make their own WordPress installs and accounts)
I hope to find the time, energy, and money to reopen all of this sometime in the new year. Right now much of the time I would spend making WordPress better is being taken up defending against WP Engine’s legal attacks. Their attacks are against Automattic, but also me individually as the owner of WordPress.org, which means if they win I can be personally liable for millions of dollars of damages.
On a memorable evening in Tokyo, State of the Word 2024 brought together WordPress enthusiasts from around the world—hundreds in person and millions more online. This event marked the first time State of the Word was hosted in Asia, reflecting the platform’s growing global reach. The setting couldn’t have been more fitting: a city where tradition and technology coexist in seamless harmony. Tokyo, much like WordPress itself, reflects a powerful blend of legacy and innovation, craftsmanship and technology, and moments of vast scale balanced by serene stillness.
Tokyo is a city you feel.
Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Cofounder
During the event, the concept of kansei engineering emerged as a central theme. This Japanese design philosophy seeks to create experiences that go beyond function and aesthetics, focusing on how something feels. As highlighted during the keynote, this principle has quietly influenced WordPress’s development, shaping its design and user experience in ways that resonate on an instinctive level.
The evening also celebrated Japan’s deep-rooted connection to WordPress. Nearly 21 years ago, Japan became the first country to localize WordPress, long before a formal translation framework existed. It all started with a single forum post from a user named Otsukare, launching a translation project that helped WordPress become a truly global platform. Seeing how far the Japanese WordPress community has come—both in market share and cultural influence—was a powerful reminder of what shared purpose can achieve.
Wapuu, WordPress’s beloved mascot, was also born in Japan. What began as a simple idea for a fun and friendly representation of WordPress evolved into a global phenomenon. Thanks to Kazuko Kaneuchi’s generous open-source contribution, Wapuu has been reimagined by WordPress communities worldwide, each version infused with local character. This uniquely Japanese creation has helped make WordPress more welcoming, approachable, and fun wherever it appears.
WordPress Growth in 2024
WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg highlighted significant achievements that underscored WordPress’s growth, resilience, and expanding global presence in 2024. He shared that WordPress now powers 43.6% of all websites globally. In Japan, WordPress’s influence is even more pronounced, powering 58.5% of all websites. This remarkable statistic reinforces the platform’s enduring role as a cornerstone of the open web and accentuates Japan’s deep-rooted commitment to the WordPress ecosystem and its developers’ significant contributions.
WordPress sites using languages other than English are expected to surpass English-language sites by 2025. German recently overtook Japanese as the third-most-used language, though Japanese remained close behind. Meanwhile, emerging languages like Farsi experienced rapid adoption, reflecting the platform’s expanding multilingual ecosystem. In Southeast Asia, languages such as Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Thai saw substantial year-over-year growth, signaling broader adoption across diverse regions.
Core downloads surged to nearly half a billion annually, with the notable releases of WordPress 6.5, 6.6, and 6.7.
WordPress’s design and development ecosystem flourished as well. Over 1,700 new themes were uploaded in 2024, bringing more than 1,000 block themes to the official repository and reflecting increased interest in modern, flexible site design.
The plugin ecosystem also saw record-breaking activity this year. Plugin downloads surged toward 2.35 billion, representing a 20% year-over-year increase. Plugin updates exceeded 3 billion and are on track to surpass 3.5 billion by year’s end. Notably, the Plugin Review Team made transformative improvements, drastically reducing the average review wait time. Their efficiency gains were complemented by the launch of the Plugin Check tool, which reduced submission issues by 41% while enabling the team to approve 138% more plugins each week.
These accomplishments showcase WordPress’s resilience, adaptability, and ever-expanding influence. As the platform continues to evolve, its global community remains at the heart of its success, driving innovation and ensuring that WordPress thrives as the leading tool for building the open web.
Help shape the future of WordPress: Join a contributor team today!
WordPress lead architect, Matías Ventura, highlighted WordPress’s evolution through the lenses of writing, design, building, and development, demoing various pieces of new and forthcoming enhancements.
Writing
The writing experience in WordPress saw notable advancements this year, with an improved distraction-free mode that helps users to focus on content creation without interface distractions. Now you can directly select the image itself to drag and drop it where you want, even enabling on-the-fly gallery creation when you drop images next to each other.
Additionally, the introduction of block-level comments in the editor, currently an experimental feature, promises to reshape collaborative workflows by enabling teams to leave notes directly on blocks.
These enhancements all work together to make writing, composing, and editing in WordPress feel more fluid, personal, and pleasant than ever.
Design
Along with new default theme Twenty Twenty-Five, more than 1,000 block themes offer tailored starting points for different site types, including portfolios, blogs, and business sites. Designers can also utilize the improved Style Book for a comprehensive view of their site’s appearance, ensuring a smooth design process.
Design work isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s also about creating the right environment and guardrails. It’s important that users can interact with their site, add content, replace media, and choose sections without needing to know the layout details. We’re implementing better default experiences to help you focus exclusively on the content or on the design, depending on your needs at the moment.
This all works seamlessly with the zoom-out view, where users can compose content using patterns without having to set up every individual block. Having a bird’s-eye view of your site can really help you gain a different perspective.
These design capabilities scale with you as your WordPress projects grow. WordPress’s approach to design is systematic: blocks combine to form patterns, patterns form templates, and templates help separate content from presentation.
Building
WordPress’s content management capabilities allow working at scale and across teams. Central to this is the introduction of Block Bindings, which merge the flexibility of blocks with the structured power of meta fields. This feature allows block attributes to be directly linked to data sources like post meta, reducing the need for custom blocks while creating deeper, more dynamic content relationships. The familiar block interface remains intact, making complex data management feel seamless. This connects naturally with our broader work on Data Views for post types and meta fields.
These updates reinforce WordPress’s role as a powerful content management system by connecting its core primitives—blocks, post types, taxonomies, and meta fields—more intuitively.
Development
Lastly, Matías showcased a range of groundbreaking tools that empower WordPress developers and streamline their workflows. One of the highlights was the new Templates API, which has simplified the process of registering and managing custom templates. Future updates to the API will allow users to register and activate templates seamlessly, enabling dynamic site customizations such as scheduling different homepage templates for special events or swapping category archives during campaigns. This flexible approach offers developers greater creative control in a standardized way.
The session also explored the Interactivity API, designed to deliver fast, seamless website experiences by enabling server-rendered interactivity within WordPress. Unlike JavaScript-heavy frameworks, this technology keeps everything within WordPress’s existing ecosystem, bridging the gap between developers and content creators. Attendees saw live demos showcasing instant search, pagination, and commenting—all without page reloads—while maintaining a perfect performance score of 100 on Lighthouse. In addition, it was announced that responsive controls will receive significant attention, with new features being explored, like block visibility by breakpoint and adding min/max controls to the columns block.
The WordPress Playground also emerged as a game-changer, allowing users to spin up WordPress sites directly in their browsers, experiment with Blueprints, and manage projects offline. With improved GitHub integration and expanded documentation, WordPress developers now have a more accessible and powerful toolkit than ever before.
An AI Future
Returning to the stage, Matt noted that Gutenberg’s evolution is paving the way for AI-powered site building while keeping creative control in users’ hands. A recent speed building challenge on WordPress’s YouTube channel showcased this potential, with Nick Diego using AI-assisted tools and Ryan Welcher building manually. While the AI-assisted approach won, the key takeaway was that AI isn’t here to replace developers but to enhance creativity and efficiency.
Community Impact and Global Reach
When WordPress Executive Director Mary Hubbard took the stage, she emphasized WordPress’s commitment to its open-source mission and the power of its global community. Mary shared her passion for defending WordPress’s principles, reaffirming that when users choose WordPress, they should receive the authentic, community-driven experience that the platform stands for. This commitment to clarity, trust, and open-source integrity is central to ensuring WordPress’s long-term sustainability and success.
Mary Hubbard, WordPress Executive Director
In 2024, WordPress’s global influence surged through expanded educational programs, developer contributions, and grassroots initiatives. The platform’s social media following grew to 2.3 million, while major events like WordCamps and live-streamed gatherings attracted millions of attendees and viewers, connecting people worldwide.
Learn WordPress introduced Structured Learning Pathways, offering tailored tracks for beginners and developers, fostering a growing network of creators eager to learn and contribute. Grassroots programs flourished, with WP Campus Connect bringing WordPress education to Indian colleges and innovation competitions in Uganda empowering young creators. In Latin America, the Community Reactivation Project reignited meetups across nine cities, fostering a network of over 150 active members and setting the stage for three new WordCamps in 2025.
WordPress’s efforts also advanced through Openverse, which expanded its free content library to 884 million images and 4.2 million audio files, serving millions of creators worldwide and supporting WordPress’s broader mission of democratizing publishing.
Whether through educational platforms, developer-driven innovation, or community-led projects, WordPress’s ecosystem continues to nurture shared learning, creativity, and collaboration, ensuring its growth and relevance for future generations.
Japanese Community Highlights
Junko Fukui Nukaga—Community Team rep, program manager, and WordCamp organizer—noted that WordPress’s prominence in Japan contributes to an economy now estimated to exceed 100 billion yen.
In October of 2024, the Japanese WordPress community celebrated DigitalCube’s IPO on the Tokyo PRO Market, marking a milestone for the local WordPress ecosystem. Major contributors like Takayuki Miyoshi’s Contact Form 7 plugin surpassed 10 million active users, while companies like Sakura Internet and XServer built specialized WordPress infrastructure.
Community events in Japan have also flourished, with 189 local meetups held throughout the year, fueled by dedicated volunteers and organizers. Translation Night gatherings have ensured WordPress remains accessible to Japanese users, reflecting a thriving collaborative spirit.
Matt gave special recognition to Japan’s standout contributor, Aki Hamano, a Core Committer whose exceptional efforts elevated WordPress development over the past year. Hamano-san made an impressive 774 contributions to WordPress core, earning 162 props for WordPress 6.5, rising to 274 props for 6.6 as the second-highest contributor, and securing the top spot with 338 props for 6.7.Other notable Japanese contributors included Akira Tachibana, an active Docs Team member, and Nukaga, recognized for her exceptional community organizing efforts. Additionally, 13 Japanese contributors supported 5.4% of WordPress 6.6 development, showcasing the country’s growing influence in the WordPress ecosystem.
Data Liberation
Reflecting on the progress since the initiative’s launch last year, the focus remained on ensuring that WordPress not only becomes more powerful but also embodies freedom in its deepest sense—the freedom to move content anywhere, collaborate without limits, and create without constraints. This vision extends beyond individual sites to a broader web where content flows seamlessly across platforms, enabling unrestricted creativity and innovation.
One compelling example demonstrated how easily ePub files could be imported into a WordPress site, integrating seamlessly with existing designs. This represents the initiative’s broader goal: making content migration and integration effortless. WordPress Playground plays a critical role in this vision by enabling easy site migration through a simple browser extension. With Playground as a staging area, migrating and adapting sites becomes intuitive and accessible.
Q&A
The floor was opened to questions in both Japanese and English.
Questions from the audience, including Tokyo Vice author Jake Adelstein, covered the future of blogging, WordPress performance, the impact of AI search, and what democratizing publishing means today. Matt shared his excitement for more open platforms such as Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as his recommendations for optimizing your site for both humans and AI. A common thread throughout was that a personal website is an important part of your digital identity, and WordPress allows you to express yourself in fun and unique ways.
Panels
After attendees enjoyed a special performance by the pianist, Takai-san, industry leaders, creators, and innovators took the stage for panel discussions about the present and future of WordPress, moderated by Mary Hubbard.
Publishing in the Open
Featuring:
Mieko Kawakami, Japanese Author and Poet
Craig Mod, Author of Things Become Other Things
Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Cofounder and Automattic CEO
This first panel explored the transformative power of open-source publishing. Panelists shared insights into how open publishing has influenced their creative journeys, expanded audience engagement, and shaped storytelling across cultural boundaries.
Publishing in the open has defined what I’ve done. All the best connections I’ve made in live have been the result of publishing in the open. – Craig Mod
Publishing in the open, like WordPress, is about building community, mutual connections, and putting power back into the hands of creators.
The Future of WordPress in Japan and Beyond
Featuring:
Hajime Ogushi, mgn CEO
Genki Taniguchi, SAKURA internet Inc. Senior Director
Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Cofounder and Automattic CEO
The second discussion highlighted WordPress’s remarkable growth in Japan and its broader global impact. The discussion covered the drivers behind Japan’s adoption of WordPress, its thriving ecosystem of WordPress-based businesses, and emerging trends in web development.
Compared to other CMSs the WordPress Japanese is much easier to use. – Hajime Ogushi
The group discussed plugins such as Contact Form 7, the affordability of hosting WordPress, and local meetups and events
Closing
Thank you to all the guests who joined us on stage, those who ventured to Tokyo, and everyone who tuned in from around the world. Today’s event showcased how a free and infinitely flexible platform, an active global community, open innovation, and a commitment to a fully democratized web make us better at being who we are.
From Tokyo, Arigatou Gozaimashita!
For those interested in exploring past State of the Word keynotes, WordPress has curated a comprehensive YouTube playlist featuring keynotes from previous years. Watch them all here: State of the Word YouTube Playlist. Be sure to mark your calendars for major WordPress events in 2025: WordCamp Asia (Manila, Philippines), WordCamp Europe (Basel, Switzerland), and WordCamp US (Portland, Oregon, USA).
If you need a little push to start writing this winter, in the comfort of your familiar editor, here it is! You can now use the Block Editor to create electronic books and other documents—all completely offline. What a full circle moment for Gutenberg!
The Block Editor contains so many features I miss when writing in other editors. It produces clean, semantic markup. You can paste in content from anywhere and the editor will clean it up for you, or paste a link onto selected text to auto-link. The List View and Outline panels allow you to easily navigate and inspect the content. And we’re constantly iterating on the Block Editor: more features and improvements are on the way, such as refined drag and drop interactions coming in early 2025.
All this inspired me to wrap our editor in an app that can read and write local files—just as other document editors do. It turns out that EPUB is the best file format to store the content, because EPUB is an open standard for e-books that is essentially a ZIP file containing HTML and media—HTML like your WordPress posts!
And just like that, the WordPress Block Editor can also be used to write books! The cool thing about EPUB files is that any e-book app, such as Kindle and Apple Books, can open it. So even if someone doesn’t have this editor, they can still easily read the content, which makes the files it produces portable.
The editor allows you to create a cover, so you can easily distinguish between the books or documents you write. It will also treat each heading as a chapter so you can easily navigate content when opened in an e-book reader.
The term “book” should be taken broadly. While the file that the Block Editor produces is primarily used for e-books, you can create any document with it. It’s possible to export your document to a DOCX file in case you need it, though the more complex blocks are not supported yet.
It is still very much a nascent project. There’s many features left to be added, such as revisions and the ability to open any externally created EPUB files, or even DOCX files, so keep an eye out for these in the coming weeks and months! If you’re interested in this editor, it’s all open source, and I welcome any kind of help.
For now, the demo editor is installable as a Progressive Web App (PWA) in Chrome. While it’s totally usable without installation, it does give you some nice benefits such as allowing you to open the EPUB files directly from your OS. In the future we might wrap it in proper native apps. Your feedback is welcome on GitHub!
Openverse.org, the vibrant platform for openly licensed media, has introduced a sleek and modern Dark Mode feature. This new site theme is designed to enhance users’ comfort and style as they explore the extensive library of creative resources. Whether for late-night browsing or simply a preference for darker aesthetics, Dark Mode makes engaging with Openverse easier on the eyes and more personalized than ever.
By reducing screen brightness in low-light settings, Dark Mode offers a more relaxed viewing experience, helping to minimize eye strain. It also caters to users with light sensitivity, creating a more inclusive browsing environment. This thoughtful addition underscores Openverse’s commitment to delivering tools that are as functional as they are visually appealing.
The release of Dark Mode is part of Openverse’s broader effort to innovate and adapt to the needs of its growing community. From the thoughtful interface design to the careful attention to accessibility, every detail was crafted to reflect Openverse’s mission of empowering creativity. By embracing modern frontend implementations like Dark Mode without compromising usability or accessibility, Openverse continues to grow while honoring the brand’s essence. In addition, this update lays the groundwork for future developments aimed at providing even more customization options and improved user experiences.
“Dark Mode marks an exciting step forward for Openverse. We designed and implemented a new user interface that keeps the brand’s essence while providing the same search experience. We’re thrilled to see how this feature fits within users’ preferences and enhances the creative journey.” – Francisco Vera. Designer
Ready to explore Openverse in a whole new light? Head to Openverse.org today and look for the Dark Mode toggle in the site footer.
WordPress 6.7.1 is a fast-follow release with a strict focus on bugs introduced in WordPress 6.7. The next major release will be version 6.8, planned for April 2025.
If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.
WordPress 6.7.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.
Login
