State of the Word 2025 recap
Another yearly tradition came to be: State of the Word 2025 just wrapped and we have all the details for you to go through!
As a quick reminder, State of the Word is the annual keynote address delivered by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, together with special guests. It is the moment to celebrate how far the opensource project has come, share the roadmap that is taking shape and see what is possible when people build the web together. What makes this year’s event different and special is a mere fact that it comes aligned with long anticipated official release of WordPress 6.9 on the same day. Think of it as Apple Special Events in the IT and web development sector because – it sure looked like that. Exclusive previews, demos, interesting details shared – sit back and go through some of the most exciting things we’ve picked up!
“WordPress belongs to all of us, but really we’re taking care of it for the next generation.”
— Matt Mullenweg
WordPress 6.9 release: smoother workflow and foundation for the future
How to describe this latest release? In short, it’s the one that smooths workflows and sets up the platform for better future growth (especially toward automation and AI-enabled workflows). From simplified site editing to expanded template management, ability to hide blocks and refining content creation, WordPress 6.9 brought many helpful features and upgrades for end users. This ties to Matt’s overall goal – improving the tool for generations to come. On top of that, this new release brought performance and development improvements as well – Abilities API being one of the most exciting ones.
This feature will enable allows core, themes and plugins to declare what functions or “abilities” they provide in a standardized, machine-readable way: inputs, outputs, permissions, execution logic. Other developer-side improvements include updates to the Interactivity API, improvements to DataViews/DataForms/Fields API, better block-processing architecture (streaming block parser, more efficient block/script/style loading), performance enhancements overall – which matter for larger sites and complex workflows.
One of the things that particularly sparked our interest is Notes feature. Similar to one of the Atarim’s AI Agents features, it comes as a solution for a better contextual feedback and collaboration at the block level and it’s designed to help teams stay better aligned throughout their projects. If you ever worked with editorial teams you’d know how much time will be saved with just this feature alone!
One thing worth noting before you go off updating to 6.9 (which we thankfully learned from Anne Bovelett) is to update Borlabs cookie plugin and WPML, because WordPress is introducing a non-backward-compatible change in the processing of JavaScript modules.
More than software: a culture of accessibility and collaboration
As Mary Hubbard said during the keynote:
„What we have is more than code, it’s momentum and it’s culture and it’s a system that lets people learn by doing and lead by showing up.“
6.9 is fast, it’s polished and it’s built for collaboration. WordPress is shipping faster, listening better and building for teams, not just individuals. Team work that is rooted in freedom:
- freedom to publish
- freedom to build
- freedom to learn and participate
- from Lagos to London, from classrooms to corporations
And in 2025, the numbers tell us a promising story:
- 43% of the web runs on WordPress
- 4% of the top 1,000 websites
- In Japan: 58.5% of all sites and 83% CMS market share
- 56% of WordPress sites are non-English – a global shift made visible
And speaking of numbers and stories, here’s another one – creativity on WordPress thrives because of what’s built on top of core:
- 60,000+ plugins which is up 68% in approved submissions since 2024
- 1B plugin downloads expected by year-end
- 14,000+ themes, including 1,500 released this year
- Block theme adoption up 40%, crossing 1,000 active block themes
In total: 74,000 plugins and themes that make every site unique.
This continued expansion is driven by 900 contributors on 6.9 – including 230 first-time contributors – showing the community pipeline is strong.
As WordPress grows, responsibility grows alongside it – listening to its users, supporting its community and staying true to its open-source values.
AI + WordPress: acceleration with purpose
2025 is the year AI officially became part of the WordPress roadmap – but in a very WordPress way:
AI should empower people, not replace them.
Recent advancements reflect that:
MCP (Model Context Protocol) adapter – connects WordPress to tools like Claude or GitHub Copilot
Abilities API – standardized automation hooks across the ecosystem
Smarter code and security reviews – faster checks for plugins and themes which leads to safer web for all
AI-enabled development environments – refactor code, automate tests, run WP-CLI alongside agents
Telex – Automattic’s experimental block generation tool – demonstrated how complex custom blocks can now be created in seconds. It’s a glimpse into a future where everyone can build, not just those who write code.
Talking about AI assisted development, we couldn’t move on without mentioning our very own AI Assistant that improves your workflow by helping you create and maintain high-quality content and code with a click of a button. On top of that, our dev team made custom GPT’s that help you generate elements from image and from text, here at your disposal and free to use:
WPBakery element builder from image
WPBakery element builder from text
Education is the key to do better
Innovation means little without access. Knowing that WordPress is about community and so much of what we do is creating for the next generations – how do we teach people how to use it?
This year:
- WordCamps reached 100,000+ people in person across the globe
- Learn.WordPress.org served 1.5M+ learners
- .org welcomed 113M visitors, with 38% first-timers
WordCamps sure are one of the most important ways that we bring people together to share, to learn, to celebrate what the community makes possible. And it is precisely the reason we stepped up this year and took time to visit and be a part of so many of them – WCEU, WC Vršac, WC Lithuania and WC Gdynia, WC Dhaka. This is where community happens, where contributors meet and where connections really turn into action – a good example on that are our developers listening to Remkus’s talk and performing TTFB testing that proved just how fast WPBakery is 😊.
That being said, WordPress introduced programs like Campus Connect and WordPress Credits that are giving people a structured way to go from curious visitor to confident builder because, once people reach the right resources, they stay and they learn. And this is another thing WPBakery has aligned with the core goal – by having extensive Knowledge base, Blog section and Video Academy at disposal for all of our users and people interested in building with our page builder. Not to mention we have more things aligned with the whole educational path in near future – so stay tuned for more when the time comes to announce it! Because, like WordPress, we too want to prepare students not just to use the tool, but to think, design and build with purpose.
Jobs aren’t disappearing – they’re evolving and WordPress is making sure people are ready.
The road ahead
2026 for WordPress means expanding – especially in Asia, Europe and Latin America – as well as doubling down on what makes the platform unstoppable:
- Collaboration at the core
- Secure and scalable architecture
- Ethical and practical AI adoption
- Global education to support the next generation of builders
And to that extent, WordPress 6.9 isn’t just another update, it’s rather a statement:
The future of the web is built by people and WordPress is giving those people stronger tools, faster workflows and more freedom than ever before.
Next year already looks exciting. And based on everything announced…the best is yet to come.
Have you watched the State of the Word 2025 and what are some of your key takeaways? Share with us in the Community.
