WordPress 5.0 Release Date Update to November 27

The WordPress 5.0 release date has been pushed back to November 27. The previous schedule outlined the possibility of a slip date where the first target date could slip by up to eight days if necessary.

“As discussed during the Core devchat this week, the initial November 19th target date is looking a bit too soon for a release date,” Gutenberg technical lead Matias Ventura said in today’s announcement on the make.wordpress.org/core blog. “After listening to a lot of feedback — as well as looking at current issues, ongoing pull requests, and general progress — we’re going to take an extra week to make sure everything is fully dialed in and the release date is now targeted for November 27th.”

Ventura outlined a new plan where beta 4 and beta 5 releases will coincide with Gutenberg 4.3 and 4.4 releases. RC1 is expected to be released November 19. He said contributors will be posting daily high level updates on the current status of the release, including things like open pull requests to be reviewed and outstanding bugs, to the #core-editor channel.

The announcement also includes a short video demonstration of Gutenberg fully integrated with the new default Twenty Nineteen theme.

Given the recent pushback on the timeline from prominent WordPress developers and business owners, the updated November 27 timeline may still not offer enough time to resolve the issues remaining and allow the ecosystem to prepare training materials that accurately reflect late stage UI changes.

At a spontaneous Q&A session at WordCamp Portland this weekend, Matt Mullenweg said WordPress 5.0 was branched from 4.9.8 so this release has been tightly wound to the previous one to allow for a more seamless transition.

The next targeted release day falls on the Tuesday after Cyber Monday, which should be a relief to anyone running a WordPress-powered e-commerce site. If WordPress misses the updated November 27 release date, it will be pushed back to the secondary target date of January 22, 2019.