Released July 17, 2026. Below: what changed, what to check before you update, and what to do if an update breaks something.
| Version | Released | Type | What it was |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7.0.2 | July 17, 2026 | Security release | A security release addressing one critical and one high-severity issue. Security releases should be applied promptly rather than batched with routine updates. |
| 7.0.1 | July 9, 2026 | Maintenance release | Bug fixes only — 13 Core tickets and 13 Gutenberg fixes, with no new features. |
The fastest check is the WordPress dashboard: the version appears at the bottom right of the admin home screen. For more detail, Tools → Site Health → Info lists the WordPress version alongside your PHP version, database server and active theme — which is the screen worth looking at before any major update, because PHP requirements rise over time.
If you manage sites you do not log into daily, the version you remember is rarely the version running. Auto-updates apply minor releases silently, and major releases sit unapplied indefinitely, so portfolios drift into a mix of versions without anyone deciding that.
How much of this applies depends on the release. A security patch on a simple site is worth applying quickly; a major release on a store deserves the whole list.
| Check | When it matters | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Take a backup and confirm it restores | Always | An untested backup is not a rollback plan. This is the only step with no acceptable shortcut. |
| Check plugin compatibility | Major releases | Check the plugins that matter most — commercial, custom, or central to how the site earns. |
| Test on staging | Major releases, and any store | For a security release on a simple site, the risk of waiting usually exceeds the risk of updating. |
| Check the PHP version | Major releases | New WordPress versions raise minimum PHP requirements over time. |
| Avoid updating during a campaign | Always | Freeze changes around launches, sales and seasonal peaks. Update the day after. |
Waiting is not the safe option it feels like. The risk of updating is that something breaks and you fix it; the risk of not updating is that a publicly disclosed vulnerability sits unpatched while automated scanners look for exactly that. For security releases the second risk is materially larger, which is why the answer is to make updating cheap to reverse rather than to update less.
The full procedure — what order to apply things in, and what to check afterwards — is on how to update WordPress and plugins safely.
Ordered by what to try first:
wp-content/plugins restores admin access in most cases without deleting anything.Detailed walk-throughs: the critical error message and the white screen of death.
Version drift across a client portfolio is not usually a decision, it is an accumulation of deferrals. One site was mid-campaign, another had a plugin that needed checking, a third nobody remembered. A year later there are four WordPress versions and three PHP versions in play, and every fix has to be tested against all of them.
The practical fix is knowing the current state of every site without logging into each one, and applying a release across the fleet as a single action with a snapshot taken per site first. Managing multiple WordPress sites covers that, and the maintenance guide covers the recurring schedule around it.
The latest stable release is WordPress 7.0.2, published on July 17, 2026. A security release addressing one critical and one high-severity issue. Security releases should be applied promptly rather than batched with routine updates.
Log in and look at the bottom right of the Dashboard, which shows the current version. Alternatively, Tools → Site Health → Info lists the WordPress version along with PHP, database and server details. Avoid publishing the version publicly in your page source if you can, since it tells automated scanners exactly what to try.
For security releases, yes — apply them promptly, because the vulnerability is public and scanners look for unpatched sites during exactly that window. For major releases, a short wait while plugin authors ship compatibility updates is reasonable, particularly on a store or a heavily customised site.
A major release adds features and is numbered accordingly. A maintenance release fixes bugs without adding features. A security release patches disclosed vulnerabilities and should be treated as urgent regardless of how small the version increment looks.
Minor releases — which include most security and maintenance updates — install automatically by default on most installations. Major releases do not; they need to be applied deliberately. Plugin and theme auto-updates are separate and are opted into individually from the Plugins and Themes screens.
If you can reach the admin, deactivate the most recently updated plugin. If you cannot, rename the wp-content/plugins folder over FTP to deactivate everything and restore access. If the site shows a critical error message, WordPress has usually emailed the administrator naming the component that failed, along with a recovery link.
Apply a release across your whole portfolio, with a snapshot per site and a report of what changed.
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