Matt Mullenweg dropped a blunt, wide-ranging critique in WordPress Slack. Matt also posted about shifting focus back to individual contributors over corporate recognition.
Hello WordPressers!
Welcome to this week’s WP More roundup — WP More newsletter issue 41, where you get curated news about WordPress and the WordPress community all in one place.
It’s been a big week in the WordPress world. Mumbai just wrapped up one of the most memorable WordCamps in years, Matt Mullenweg dropped a candid (and pointed) critique in WordPress Slack, the April developer roundup for WordPress 7.0 is out with a lot to unpack, there’s a thoughtful post from Matt about how we recognize contributors, and PressConf 2026 wrapped in Arizona with some honest conversations about where the business of WordPress is heading.
Let’s get into it.
In this Issue:
- WordCamp Asia 2026 wraps in Mumbai with record attendance and a new flagship announcement
- Matt Mullenweg goes candid in Slack and it’s a lot
- What’s new for WordPress developers in April 2026
- Matt’s post on elevating individual contributors over corporate identity
- PressConf 2026 recap: clarity, challenge, and some uncomfortable truths
WordCamp Asia 2026: Mumbai Delivered and Then Some
WordCamp Asia 2026 wrapped up on April 11 in Mumbai, India, and by nearly every measure, it was the biggest and most memorable edition of the flagship Asian WordCamp yet. The event drew 2,627 attendees to the Jio World Convention Centre across Contributor Day and two full conference days, bringing together developers, designers, agency owners, bloggers, and first-time attendees from across Asia and beyond.
The program covered serious ground from technical sessions and workshops to conversations about WordPress’s future in the age of AI. The closing ceremony had one major announcement that landed with real excitement: WordCamp India will join the calendar in 2027 as the fourth flagship WordPress event, a recognition of India’s long and active role in the WordPress project.
Penang, Malaysia was also confirmed as the host city for WordCamp Asia 2027, scheduled for April 9–11. Programs like Campus Connect, WordPress Credits, and YouthCamp all featured prominently, showing how wide the community has grown.
Key takeaways:
- 2,627 attendees made this a record edition for WordCamp Asia
- India officially confirmed as the fourth flagship WordCamp host country
- WordCamp Asia 2027 heads to Penang, Malaysia
Read the full report on The Repository here.
Mumbai’s energy carried into conversations happening in real-time back in WordPress’s own digital spaces, which brings us to what happened next.
Matt Mullenweg Says “The Wheels Have Fallen Off”
In a wide-ranging Slack session in the #core-committers channel, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg delivered a blunt assessment of the WordPress project. Returning from WordCamp Asia and catching up on messages mid-flight over Starlink, he weighed in on a disputed Trac issue and then kept going.
Over several hours, Mullenweg criticized what he described as a release culture producing “boring or mediocre crap,” called for an end to attacks on Automattic, and said the project had spent years doing damage to itself. He also posted publicly: “The only bomb is what we’ve been doing the last few years. And yes it’s my fault, and I’m going to fix it.”
Reactions in the community were split. Some found themselves agreeing with the substance of his critique while pushing back on the delivery. Others pointed out that the WordPress 7.0 release has been stalled and that contributions haven’t always been going to the right places. One contributor noted that Mullenweg’s communication style, processing things internally and then delivering it all at once, can make it difficult to actually act on his vision.
Key takeaways:
- Mullenweg is openly self-critical about where the project has gone
- The reaction in the community was mixed, support for the substance, pushback on the approach
- Expect more changes to how WordPress development is run in the coming months
Read the full report on The Repository here.
Mullenweg’s concerns about project culture tie into something he posted directly to Make WordPress Core the same week, which we’ll cover next.
What’s New for WordPress Developers in April 2026
The April developer roundup from the WordPress Developer Blog is out, and it covers a lot of ground for WordPress 7.0. The biggest news first: the 7.0 release schedule was extended after a performance issue in the Real-Time Collaboration (RTC) database architecture required a deeper architectural fix rather than a late-cycle patch. Pre-releases were paused until April 17, with a new schedule to be announced by April 22. Everything else in 7.0 is ready to go.
On the feature side, two major systems are coming: the WP AI Client, a new core PHP library that gives plugins a standardized way to work with AI providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and the Connectors API, which lets site owners configure their preferred AI providers from a dedicated screen in the admin.
There’s also the new Client-Side Abilities API, a JavaScript counterpart to the PHP Abilities system introduced in 6.9. For themes, WordPress 7.0 brings button pseudo-state styling in Global Styles, viewport-based block visibility controls, and gradient support for background images. Developers should also note that PHP 7.2 and 7.3 support is being dropped; the new minimum is PHP 7.4.
Key takeaways:
- WordPress 7.0’s release schedule was extended to fix RTC database architecture
- AI Client and Connectors API are coming to core, a big deal for the plugin ecosystem
- PHP 7.2/7.3 sites will need to update before the 7.0 update
Read the full blog on the WordPress Developer Blog here.
And while the technical side of WordPress evolves, there’s a parallel conversation happening about who gets recognized for building it.
Elevating Individuals: Matt Wants to Put People Back at the Center
In a post to Make WordPress Core that spans several teams, Matt Mullenweg made a direct appeal: let’s go back to celebrating individual contributors, not just corporate sponsors. The prompt was a badge photo from WordCamp Asia, specifically a badge displaying “SELF EMPLOYED” as the primary identifier in place of a name, which led Mullenweg to reflect on how the push for corporate sponsorship recognition has quietly reshaped the culture around contribution.
He points out that this isn’t just about badge design. It shows up in Five for the Future testimonials, in the plugin and theme directories, in WordCamp business models, and in how the project measures contribution at all. His core argument: WordPress has been tracking and celebrating inputs (hours pledged, sponsorships listed) rather than actual impact and results.
He’s calling for a rethink, both in how events recognize attendees and in how the project evaluates whether contribution is actually moving things forward. He also refers to the Mythical Man-Month, noting that adding more contributors doesn’t automatically equal more progress.
Key takeaways:
- WordPress has drifted toward recognizing companies over individuals, Mullenweg wants that reversed
- The Five for the Future model needs to focus on real impact, not just pledged hours
- This is a cultural shift, not just a design fix
Read the full blog on Make WordPress Core here.
The question of what WordPress values and who it values was also at the heart of what was being discussed in Tempe, Arizona ,at PressConf.
PressConf 2026: The Business of WordPress Gets Honest
PressConf 2026 wrapped up at Tempe Mission Palms in Arizona on April 11, and the theme for this year’s edition was “clarity”, with a deliberate edge to it. Organizer Raquel Manriquez designed the event to be more challenging than the first, with fewer sessions and more space for real conversations. Her belief going in: if you’re clear-eyed about where WordPress actually stands right now, it’s uncomfortable.
That discomfort was present throughout. One of the sharpest sessions came from Bryce Adams of Metorik, who made the case that WooCommerce has been trying to compete with Shopify for years and lost that fight before it started. On the plugin economics panel, moderated by The Repository’s Rae Morey, the consensus was that a smaller, more focused WordPress community built around real business outcomes might actually be healthier than a platform stretching to be everything to everyone.
PressConf doesn’t stage product launches or perform optimism; it’s a room of people with actual businesses at stake, being honest with each other about what’s working and what isn’t. For anyone in the WordPress business world, this is the one event worth following closely.
Key takeaways:
- Clarity was the theme and it came with some uncomfortable conclusions
- WooCommerce’s competition with Shopify was called out directly
- The ecosystem may be healthier at a smaller, more focused scale
Read the full report on The Repository here.
Other reports from The Repository you might like to read:
- WordPress.org Closes 31 Plugins After Backdoor Planted Across Flippa Portfolio
- Decision to Build EmDash Came from Cloudflare CEO, Engineer Reveals
- Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers to Put Akismet on WordPress 7.0’s Connectors Screen
- WordPress 7.0 Pre-Releases Paused Through April 17, New Schedule Due by April 22
Don’t forget to subscribe & support them, they do some amazing, hard-hitting WordPress journalism.
WordPress Must Read
→ Being The Bigger Table (sereed.media)
→ How to Prepare Your Plugins and Sites for WordPress 7.0 (unleash-wp.com)
→ Someone Bought 30 WordPress Plugins and Planted Backdoors in All of Them (thenextweb.com)
→ WordPress Media Is Becoming the Real Front Page (thewp.world)
→ It’s Time to Level Up in WordPress (remkusdevries.com)
→ AI Across The WP Ecosystem (j.cv)
→ Why ‘Future Revisions’ Should Be the Next Priority Feature for WordPress (briancoords.com)
→ WordPress Plugins Are in Trouble (justinferriman.com)
On Other WordPress News
→ Announcing Our 2026 Global Partners! (make.wordpress.org)
→ What’s New in AI 0.7.0 (9 Apr 2026)? (make.wordpress.org)
→ WordPress Core Dev Environment Toolkit: A Faster Path to Your First Core Contribution (make.wordpress.org)
→ Twenty Twenty-Seven: Team Announcement (make.wordpress.org)
→ Monthly Education Buzz Report – March 2026 (make.wordpress.org)
→ New AI-Powered Tools for Creating WordPress Learning Materials (make.wordpress.org)
→ Defining Expectations for Iteration Issues (make.wordpress.org)
From WordPress Community
→ Sumit Singh Receives the Yoast Care Fund for His Contribution to the WordPress Community (yoast.com)
→ New WP Engine AI Agency Trends Report Finds the Rise of the Intelligent Web Is Accelerating Digital Agency Investment in AI (wpengine.com)
→ 5 Years at Rank Math (kafleg.com.np)
→ WordPress Is Very Much Alive (kittenkamala.com)
→ Your AI Remembers Everything. You Own None of It. (regionallyfamous.com)
→ WordCamp Asia 2026, FOMO or JOMO? (tacoverdo.com)
→ Meet Studio Code: I Redesigned My WordPress Site in 2 Hours (riad.blog)
→ Write: What If WordPress Was Designed Purely for Writers? (pootlepress.com)
→ After WordCamp Asia 2026: The AI Conversation Nobody Was Prepared For (vapvarun.com)
Conclusion
That’s a wrap on Issue 41. This week made one thing clear: WordPress is in a moment of genuine self-reflection about its culture, contributors, releases, and business ecosystem.
That’s not a bad thing. Projects that can ask hard questions about themselves tend to come out better for it.
If something here sparked a thought, hit reply; we read every message. And if a friend or colleague would find this useful, feel free to pass it along.
Nishat, WP More
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