WordPress has published the first Release Candidate (RC1) for version 6.9, marking the final phase of testing before the scheduled December 2, 2025, launch. The announcement, written by Amy Kamala on the official WordPress.org News blog, emphasizes that this pre-release build is intended strictly for testing environments, not production sites.
Kamala notes that RC1 can be evaluated through multiple channels, including the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, direct download, WP-CLI, and a ready-to-use WordPress Playground instance. The core team is urging developers, testers, and hosting providers to help validate the release to ensure a smooth rollout next month.
What’s New in RC1
While the full scope of updates was detailed earlier during the Beta cycle, Kamala highlights several areas testers should pay particular attention to:
- Enhancements to the Site Editor and improvements to overall content creation workflows
- A new ability to hide blocks, giving creators more layout control
- New blocks and “notes on blocks”, expanding customization options
- A universal command palette in WP-Admin, extending the quick-command UX beyond the Site Editor
- Updates to core developer APIs, including:
- Abilities API
- Interactivity API
- Block binding API
- Dataviews and dataforms components
- Performance upgrades, such as refined script and style loading, caching improvements, and support for fetchpriority within ES Modules and Import Maps
- Efforts toward standardizing output buffering
Kamala also encourages testers to review recent Gutenberg and Core commits, as well as closed Trac tickets, to understand what has changed since Beta 4.
Call for Community Testing
As with all major releases, the WordPress project relies heavily on community participation. Testers are asked to verify new features, look for regressions, and confirm that the upgrade process works smoothly across environments. Plugin and theme developers are encouraged to finalize compatibility checks and update their “Tested up to” tags accordingly.
Kamala also calls on web hosts to run distributed tests to ensure full compatibility across diverse server configurations.
Looking Ahead
With RC1 now available, WordPress remains on track for its final release date of December 2. As the announcement concludes, Kamala includes a haiku celebrating RC1’s emergence as an annual tradition within release posts.