It’s been 23 years since May 27, 2003, when version 0.70 of new software known as WordPress was released.

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Program transcript

Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community.

In this episode, you’ll find the information from May 25 to 31, 2026.

WordPress celebrated its 23rd birthday on May 27, and Matt Mullenweg marked it with a post on the official blog reflecting on a year he describes as the strongest and most precarious in the project’s history.

On the positive side, he highlights the launch of WordPress 7.0: within just seven days, 46% of all installations worldwide had already updated automatically and without incident.

On the darker side, Matt spends much of the post on the legal conflict with WP Engine and its parent company Silver Lake, which he says is consuming time and energy from key project people and has reached the point of attempting to dissolve the WordPress Foundation. Matt publicly calls on Silver Lake to end the litigation, and closes the post on a very personal note, acknowledging the human cost it’s taking on him and those around him.

The Core team has announced that WordPress 7.1 will upgrade React: moving from version 18 to 19, a change that will arrive first in the Gutenberg plugin in version 23.3 and will...