70% of All New WordPress Themes Are Classic

There have been a few recent discussions in the WordPress community about Themes, starting with Nick Hamze’s call for weirder ones. Nick is the Chief Creative Officer at Gumshoe and a former Automattician. Then, there is the ongoing discussion and commentary about the state of Gutenberg, with folks taking the side of their favorite page or block builder, or Core’s Full Site Editing (FSE). So, I took the opportunity to get a sense of how relevant Themes are in 2025.

Before I start, a few words about the data. My main source is WordPress Themes Trac, which tracks the Theme review and publication process. I looked specifically at new Themes published in the last 2 years – 3,486 in total. I was able to identify Full Site Editing Themes because of the ‘full-site-editing’ tag in the Keywords column.

Please note: I will not make too many assumptions about what the data means in this post. I’m keen to talk to Theme authors about their views and choices and follow up with an analysis. Feel free to share your thoughts in our social channels – the official WPBakery Facebook Group, or LinkedIn.

Are People Still Interested in WordPress Themes?

I’ve been living in the page builder bubble most of my WordPress professional life. Before starting to work for WPBakery last December, I hadn’t installed a Theme in over 10 years, relying on visual page builders to build websites from scratch. The shift to visual page builders and Gutenberg has been significant, but Themes are still the starting point for many businesses and agencies.

Despite AI and changing search habits, keyword research is still a good measure of demand. Here’s what I found using Ahrefs:

• There are 34,810 keywords related to “wordpress theme” (searching Google.com)
• The monthly search volume is 67K in the US and 422K globally
• There are 1.6K searches specifically for “wordpress theme” in the US, and 24K globally

There is still a lot of demand, but a fraction of what it used to be 10 years ago. Here’s the search volume for “wordpress theme” over the period (searching Google.com):

Demand seems to have plateaued in 2021. It will be interesting to see if it will rise again as the adoption of Full Site Editing grows.

Our numbers are indicators for demand too – WPBakery works on any WordPress Theme, and we haven’t seen any dip in sales since we started to sell directly.

Classic Themes Make Up 70% of the Ones Published in the WordPress Directory in the Last Two Years

Of the 3,486 Themes I downloaded from WordPress Themes Trac, 1,045 are block-based Full Site Editing Themes, and 3,486 are not.

On average, 152 Themes were approved each month. However, stats are somewhat skewed by March 23, when double the number was published. This may have been due to a change in how Themes were set live in the Directory.

The Percentage of Full Site Editing Themes is Growing

Good news for the project, as the adoption of Gutenberg by Theme Authors is on the rise.

September last year was a good month, with 40% of Full Site Editing Themes being pushed live. If the trend continues, this figure should reach 50% in 2026, an important milestone for the Gutenberg project.

Top Theme Authors Are Not So Keen on Gutenberg

In the dataset, 81% of Themes submitted by the top 10 Theme authors are Classic Themes. I’ve excluded Automattic from this table to focus on ‘independent’ authors.

Interesting to see that half of the Theme Authors have not submitted an FSE Theme at all, while only one works exclusively with them.

Final Thoughts

On 1 December, Jamie Marsland shared a screenshot of a WordPress poll on X, showing that 54% of 804 participants use a Block Theme. This may be a reflection of folks implementing a Theme, not those building them.

Data from WordPress Themes Trac tells a different story: Classic Themes are still the preferred approach for Theme Authors, but Gutenberg is gaining ground.

However, I don’t think we can speculate on future trends based on this data alone. There are all kinds of factors at play, including more ‘political’ ones affecting Core development. I’ve reserved judgment until I have a more qualitative take on this, reaching out to several Theme Authors to ask about their current approach and what their plans are for the future. It would be great if the Make WordPress Themes team would run a survey asking a more detailed set of questions too.

If you want to view more stats about Themes, check out Dumitru Brinzan’s post – WordPress.org Themes of 2024: Reflections & Stats.

Let me close off this post by highlighting that 309 Themes were published in January and February this year, 31% of which are Full Site Editing Themes. Do you think we’ll see more, as the trend suggests? What’s influencing adoption? If you’re a Theme Author, feel free to get in touch to share your views.