WordPress 7.0 has reached its third release candidate, and the most consequential change from the earlier RC2 announcement is what isn’t in it: Real Time Collaboration — the feature that would have allowed multiple users to edit the same post simultaneously — has been pulled from the release entirely and will be re-evaluated during the 7.1 cycle. RC3 itself closes out more than 143 issues since RC2 and is intended for test environments only, ahead of the final 7.0 release on May 20, 2026.

Since RC2 landed on March 26, 2026, the team has closed those issues across WordPress Core Trac, the project’s bug-tracking system, and Gutenberg commits. Developer notes covering the full scope of changes are available for anyone looking to review the technical specifics before the release ships.

A glass door swings open into a bright white corridor with tall windows, a notebook, coffee cup, and laptop on a nearby desk.

WordPress 7.0 Release Candidate 3 Now Available for Testing

Because of the RTC removal, RC3 is no longer designated a “new Beta 1” as it was previously described — the project is keeping the current RC timeline rather than resetting to a new beta phase. There are four ways to get RC3 running in a test environment:

  • WordPress Beta Tester plugin — install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, then select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream
  • Direct ZIP download — install the RC3 build directly from WordPress.org on any test site
  • WP-CLI — run wp core update --version=7.0-RC3 from the command line
  • WordPress Playground — test in a browser-based environment with no setup required

Plugin and theme developers should treat this RC as the last opportunity to confirm compatibility before updating the “Tested up to” field in their readme files to 7.0. Any compatibility issues should be reported to the Alpha/Beta support forums with as much detail as possible.

RC3 also marks the hard string freeze point for the 7.0 release cycle — the point after which no translatable text can change — meaning translation teams can now finalize their work. Hosting partners including Kinsta, Bluehost, GoDaddy, WordPress.com, XServer, and Ionos helped test variations of the RTC architecture prior to that feature being deferred.

Anyone who finds a bug during testing can report it through the Alpha/Beta support forums or file a reproducible report directly on WordPress Trac. The Make WordPress Core blog will continue publishing 7.0-related updates in the weeks leading up to the May 20 release.