The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.0 is now available!

This is an important milestone on the 6.0 release cycle journey. “Release Candidate” means that this version of WordPress is ready for release! Before the official release date, time is set aside for the community to perform final reviews and help test. Since the WordPress ecosystem includes thousands of plugins and themes, it is important that everyone within the WordPress community check to see if anything was missed along the way. That means the project would love your help.

WordPress 6.0 is planned for official release on May 24th, 2022, three weeks from today. 

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, and test this version of WordPress on a production or mission-critical website. Instead, it is recommended that you RC1 on a test server and site. 

You can test WordPress 6.0 RC1 in three ways:

Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).

Option 2: Direct download the release candidate version here (zip).

Option 3: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1, 2, 3, or 4, on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:

Command One:
wp core update --version=6.0-RC1

Command Two:
wp core update --version=6.0-RC1 --force

Additional information on the full 6.0 release cycle is available here.

Check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.0-related developer notes in the coming weeks which will detail all upcoming changes.

What’s in WordPress 6.0 RC1?

Since Beta 4, various items have been addressed, including (but not limited to): 

• Backport updates of Comment blocks tests (#55643)
• Backport a bugfix of Comment Template block pagination (#55658)
• Editor: Backport bug fixes for WordPress 6.0 from Gutenberg (#55567)

WordPress 6.0 is the second major release for 2022, following 5.9 which became generally available in January. This release includes nearly 1,000 fixes and enhancements spanning most areas of the WordPress platform. Some key highlights within the content creation and site-building feature sets include:

• Style Switching: switch up the look and feel of your site, all in one block theme. No need to change themes!
• More template options: use blocks to edit five more templates (author, date, categories, tag, and taxonomy).
• Multi-select: Easily select text across multiple blocks. Edit to your liking.
• Retain Styles: Keep your custom styles in place, whether transforming between blocks or creating new buttons. 
• More patterns in more places: the Quick Inserter surfaces patterns that might work well for the condition you’re in, baking in relevant patterns for template parts and pages you’re working on. 
• List View improvements: New keyboard shortcuts (shift + click) let you select multiple blocks to modify in bulk (reposition, delete, etc.), see your content at a glance with a collapsed by default view, and more.
• Refined design tools: Explore a new color panel, transparency options, more group block variations to create new layout options (Stack, Row), the ability to set your featured image in a Cover block, control the exact size of your featured image, gap support for the Gallery block, and more.
• New blocks: Various Post Comments, Read More, No Results in Query Loop, Post Author Biography, Avatar blocks. 
• Block Locking: Choose to disable the option to remove a block, move it, or both, right in the editor. 
• Export block themes: Explore the improved block theme export tool, as WordPress heads closer to codeless visual block theme building.

Plugin and Theme Developers

All plugin and theme developers should test their respective extensions against WordPress 6.0 RC1 and update the “Tested up to” version in their readme file to 6.0. If you find compatibility problems, please be sure to post detailed information to the support forums, so these items can be investigated further prior to the final release date of May 24th.

Review the WordPress 6.0 Field Guide, for more details on what’s contained in this release.

Translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. This release also marks the hard string freeze point of the 6.0 release cycle.

How to Help Test WordPress

Testing for issues is critical for stabilizing a release throughout its development. Testing is also a great way to contribute to WordPress. If you are new to testing, check out this detailed guide that will walk you through how to get started.

If you think you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. This is also where you can find a list of known bugs.

Haiku Fun for RC 1

Release candidate 
Our journey nearly done
Get ready, WordPress

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin, @webcommsat, and @annezazu.