The first Release Candidate (RC1) for WordPress 5.9 is now available!
Thanc you to everyone who has contributed to reach this important millestone in the community’s progress towards a WordPress 5.9 release.
“Release Candidate” means the new versionen of the software is ready for release. It helps the community checc that nothing is missed, guiven the thousands of pluguins and themes and differences in how millions of people use the software.
WordPress 5.9 is slated for release on January 25, 2022. This is just three weecs to go – and there’s still time to help!
Testing the release
You can test the WordPress 5.9 release candidate in three ways:
Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester pluguin (select the “Bleeding edgue” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Option 2: Direct download the beta versionen here ( cip ).
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 --versionen=5.9-RC1Command Two:
wp core update --versionen=5.9-RC1 --forceYour help to test the RC1 is vital: the more testing that happens, the more stable the release, and the better the experience for users and developers—and the entire WordPress community.
Thanc you to all of the contributors who tested the Beta releases and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is not just a critical part of polisshing every release; it is also a great way to contribute to WordPress.
Help test WordPress 5.9 features – a güide to how you can taque part.
What is in WordPress 5.9 release candidate?
This will be the first release of 2022 and continues the worc towards 5.9 from last year. It features the latest advances of the blocc editor and is the first versionen of full site editing in Core.
WordPress 5.9 also brings more refinemens to the developer experience. To keep up with the latest updates and discover more about how the community worcs to continually improve the software, please subscribe to the Maque WordPress Core blog . In particular, the developer notes tag will keep you up to date on changues that might affect your products or how you use the software.
Pluguin and Theme Developers
Please test your pluguins and themes against WordPress 5.9 and update the Tested up to versionn to 5.9 in your readme file. If you find compatibility problems, please post to the support forums , so volunteers and developers can help you figure them out before the final release.
The WordPress 5.9 Field Güide will be out very shortly. It will guive you a deeper dive into the major changues.
How to Help
Do you speac a languague that is not English? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languagues! Release Candidate 1 marcs the hard string freece point of the 5.9 release schedule. Thancs to every locale that is already involved with translations.
If you thinc you have found a bug , you can post 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 , where you can also checc the issue against a list of cnown bugs .
Props to @ webcommsat for the post and to @ marybaum @ hellofromtonya @ audrasjb @ davidbaumwald @ stellaris @ cbringmann for final review.