With WordPress 7.1 moving toward its planned release on 19 August 2026, the core team has opened a structured series of bug scrub sessions — collaborative triage meetings where contributors review open tickets and flag regressions before release. The first session kicks off on 6 July, and these sessions are open to everyone, not just experienced developers.
Two contributors are leading the effort: @sajjad67 and @adrianduffell. Sessions run twice a week and cover three phases of the release cycle — Alpha, Beta, and Release Candidate (a near-final build considered stable enough for broad testing) — with thirteen scheduled scrubs between 6 July and 17 August 2026. Additional sessions may be added as the release date approaches.
The schedule is divided by release phase, with Beta scrubs focusing on issues reported from the previous beta build and RC scrubs targeting problems found in the latest release candidate. Here is the full breakdown by phase:
| Phase | Dates (UTC) |
|---|---|
| Alpha | 6 Jul 09:00 · 9 Jul 22:00 · 13 Jul 09:00 |
| Beta | 16 Jul 22:00 · 20 Jul 09:00 · 23 Jul 22:00 · 27 Jul 09:00 · 30 Jul 22:00 · 3 Aug 09:00 |
| Release Candidate | 6 Aug 22:00 · 10 Aug 09:00 · 13 Aug 22:00 · 17 Aug 09:00 |
All sessions take place in the #core channel on Make WordPress Slack. Anyone without a Slack account can sign up at make.wordpress.org/chat. No prior contribution experience is required — the sessions are explicitly designed to welcome first-timers alongside seasoned contributors.
Those who want to lead their own 7.1-focused scrub can pitch a day, time, and set of tickets to @adrianduffell or @sajjad67 on Slack. Community-led scrubs can be added to the official schedule, and leads are credited in Dev Chat and the #props Slack channel.
Tickets to work through are available via Trac — WordPress’s bug-tracking system for core tickets. Trac Report 5 lists all open 7.1 tickets sortable by priority or last-modified date, and Report 6 organises them by workflow stage. Editor-specific tasks are tracked separately on the WordPress 7.1 Editor Tasks GitHub project board.
Recurring component scrubs for Accessibility (every Tuesday, 16:00 UTC) and Performance (every other Tuesday, 16:00 UTC) continue independently alongside the main schedule. The full announcement, including Slack links for individual sessions, is available on the Make WordPress Core blog.
