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At a WordPress meetup earlier this year, someone asked the speaker a simple question: “So is Gutenberg finished yet?” The whole room laughed — not because it was a silly question, but because every one of us had asked it ourselves. Eight years after the block editor arrived, the roadmap still has entire phases labeled “coming soon.” I went home that night and mapped out exactly where Gutenberg stands and what comes next. This article is that map.
I am Sophie Vermeer, and I have designed and built WordPress sites through every phase of the Gutenberg project — from the chaotic launch of WordPress 5.0 to the full-site editing era to today’s AI-powered WordPress 7.x. I track the official roadmap the way some people track football transfers, because knowing what is coming has saved my clients from expensive rebuilds more than once.
If you build, design, or simply use WordPress, this roadmap breakdown is for you. I will explain the four phases in plain language, show you what WordPress 7.0 already delivered, walk through what is actively being built right now, and — most importantly — tell you exactly how to prepare so the future arrives as an upgrade, not a surprise.
No developer jargon, no hype. Just the plan, the evidence, and your action list.
Here is what this guide covers:
- The four Gutenberg phases, explained in plain language
- What WordPress 7.0 already delivered
- Phase 3: collaboration features landing now
- AI in the editor: what is real and what is next
- Design superpowers coming to blocks
- Phase 4: multilingual — the sleeping giant
- How to prepare your sites today
- Frequently asked questions
- Final thoughts
Let us start with the big picture — the four-phase plan that has guided everything since 2018.
The Four Gutenberg Phases, Explained Simply
WordPress plans its future in public, and the official roadmap frames everything around four phases of the Gutenberg project. Think of them as chapters in one long story: first fix how we write, then fix how we design, then fix how we work together, then fix how we speak every language.
Phase 1 — Easier Editing. The block editor itself, shipped with WordPress 5.0 in December 2018 and improving ever since. This is the Gutenberg you already use every day: paragraphs, images, and buttons as movable blocks instead of one big text box. Done, though still being refined.
Phase 2 — Customization. Full Site Editing: block patterns, the block directory, block themes, and the Site Editor that lets you design headers, footers, and templates with blocks. This culminated in WordPress 6.3 (2023), when the Site Editor came out of beta. Done — this is the current design paradigm.
Phase 3 — Collaboration. Better ways to co-author content: block-level commenting, visual revision tracking, and eventually real-time co-editing like Google Docs. This is the current phase, actively in progress. The first features have shipped in WordPress core, and real-time co-editing has been beta-tested by real editorial teams.
Phase 4 — Multilingual. Core support for multilingual sites — no plugin required. Still ahead, still in planning. But when it lands, it will reshape one of WordPress’s most plugin-dependent areas.
The same official roadmap lists the project’s big-picture goals for 2026: deliver three major releases, embed AI across the WordPress experience with clear guardrails, and grow the contributor pipeline. Everything I describe below maps to that public plan — you can verify it all on the official WordPress roadmap.
What WordPress 7.0 Already Delivered
Before looking forward, a quick look back — because WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong,” released May 20, 2026, was the largest core update since Gutenberg itself, and it set the direction for everything coming next. If you have not explored it yet, our complete guide to the block editor will get you up to speed on the modern editing experience.
The headline was AI in core. WordPress 7.0 introduced a provider-agnostic AI Client built on the Abilities API (first introduced in WordPress 6.9), managed from a new Connectors screen that supports Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. Translation: WordPress can now talk to AI services through a standard interface, and site owners choose their provider. This is the foundation — not a gimmick feature, but plumbing that every future AI capability will build on.
For writers and editors, 7.0 brought Visual Revisions — a color-coded view showing exactly what changed between saves, so you can see edits at a glance instead of squinting at diff text. It also upgraded Notes, WordPress’s block-level commenting feature, with email notifications and a suggestions mode. And quietly, it began the admin dashboard’s first major redesign since 2013.
One headline feature did not make it: real-time collaboration was postponed for stability work shortly before launch. That postponement tells you something important about how the core team operates — they will delay a marquee feature rather than ship it half-broken. Keep that in mind when I describe what is “coming”: the roadmap is a direction, not a promise. As the MonsterMegs 2026 core roadmap analysis cautions, these plans are being actively pursued but may not all make the final release.
Phase 3 in Progress: Collaboration Features Landing Now
I have good news for anyone who edits with a team: the collaboration phase is no longer a wish list. It is shipping, piece by piece, and the pieces are genuinely useful.
Notes are growing up. The roadmap describes upcoming Notes features including emoji reactions, a full suggestion mode, and rich text support. If you have ever managed editorial feedback through email threads and scattered Slack messages, block-level comments with suggestions — “accept this change / reject it” directly on the paragraph — will feel like a superpower. I have tested the early versions with a client editorial team, and the reduction in “wait, which version did you mean?” confusion alone justified the excitement.
Real-time co-editing is coming back. Postponed from 7.0 for stability work, collaborative editing continues to progress through the Gutenberg plugin, where the team stages the work to catch regressions before it reaches production sites. When it lands in core, multiple people will be able to edit the same post simultaneously — the Google Docs experience, inside WordPress, with WordPress’s permissions and revision systems underneath.
Why this matters for you: if your publishing workflow involves writers, editors, reviewers, or clients who “just want to leave a quick comment,” start learning the Notes workflow now. Teams that adopt block-level feedback early will have a real efficiency edge over teams still emailing Word documents back and forth in 2027.
AI in the Editor: What Is Real and What Is Next
Let us separate the shipped reality from the roadmap, because AI discussions generate more heat than light.
Real today: the AI Client and Abilities API in WordPress 7.0, with the Connectors screen letting you plug in your choice of AI provider. This is infrastructure — it standardizes how WordPress features request AI capabilities, so plugin developers and core features share one well-governed path instead of each wiring up their own API calls.
On the roadmap: the team is iterating on the AI Client with generation streaming (responses appear as they are generated, instead of making you wait) and embeddings support (which enables semantic search and smarter content suggestions). Even more interesting is the planned Guidelines feature, which lets organizations encode editorial rules and brand voice directly into the editor — imagine your style guide enforced as you type, not as a PDF nobody reads.
Note: the 2026 goals explicitly say “AI everywhere, with clear guardrails and benchmarks” — transparency, user control, and WordPress values are part of the plan, not an afterthought. That matters because it signals the team has learned from the broader industry’s AI trust problems. AI features you can inspect, control, and turn off will earn adoption; black boxes will not.
What to do: nothing urgent. Do not rebuild your workflow around AI features that are still iterating. But do follow the development — when Guidelines land, early adopters who encode their editorial standards first will produce more consistent content with less review overhead.
Design Superpowers Coming to Blocks
This is the section that excites me most as a designer, because it closes the gap between “what a developer can hand-code” and “what anyone can build with blocks.”
Responsive styling per block. The roadmap includes responsive styling controls for blocks at different screen sizes — set a heading size for desktop, a different one for mobile, without custom CSS. Anyone who has wrestled with mobile typography in the Site Editor knows this is long overdue, and it will eliminate an entire category of custom code.
Hover and focus states. Pseudo-state styling — designing how a button looks when hovered or focused — is coming to blocks natively. This sounds small and is actually huge: interactive design without code has been one of the block editor’s most visible gaps versus page builders.
New blocks and media handling. Planned additions include a Playlist block with waveform visualization, a native Table of Contents block, and a Tabs block. The Classic block is slated for deprecation and removal from the inserter — a small but telling sign that the pre-Gutenberg era is being gently retired. On the media side, expect a free-form image cropper and client-side media processing for formats like HEIC and Ultra HDR, which means faster uploads and less server work.
Bonus Tip: If you are still building new sites with the Classic block or heavily shortcode-dependent workflows, start migrating now. The Classic block’s deprecation from the inserter is the writing on the wall — not an emergency, but a clear direction. Future you will thank present you.
Under the Hood: The React Upgrade (Why It Matters to You)
There is one roadmap item that sounds boring and is actually the highest-stakes change in years: WordPress is swapping the React framework version that powers the entire editor. No previous WordPress core release has ever swapped a major React version, so there is little precedent — and a behavioral change in React can ripple into custom blocks, page builders, and every plugin that extends the editor.
The team is deliberately staging this work in the Gutenberg plugin first, to catch regressions before they reach production sites, rather than dropping an untested framework straight into core. That is reassuring — but it is also your cue. When the release containing the React swap ships, test it on staging before updating production, especially if you rely on custom blocks or page builders. Our safe update checklist was written for exactly this kind of release. Sites with heavy custom-block usage should treat that update like a major migration, not a routine click.
Phase 4: Multilingual — The Sleeping Giant
Phase 4 — core support for multilingual sites, no plugin required — is still in the planning stage. No dates, no shipped features. So why am I giving it a whole section? Because of what it will disrupt when it arrives.
Multilingual WordPress today means plugins — powerful ones, but plugins with their own data models, their own quirks, and their own pricing. A core implementation would standardize how translations are stored, how language switchers work, and how multilingual SEO is handled. For the thousands of businesses running multilingual sites, that is potentially the most consequential Gutenberg phase of all.
What to do: if you are choosing a multilingual solution today, prefer plugins that store data in standard WordPress structures rather than exotic custom tables — they will migrate most cleanly whenever core support arrives. And keep Phase 4 on your radar; when planning documents appear on Make WordPress Core, that is your early signal to start preparing.
How to Prepare Your Sites Today: The Action List
Roadmaps are only useful if they change what you do on Monday morning. Here is my concrete preparation list, in priority order.
1. Move to block themes for new projects. Every future design feature — responsive controls, pseudo-states, new blocks — is being built for the block paradigm. Starting new sites on block themes means each release makes your sites more capable automatically. Our article on theme mistakes that break sites covers the pitfalls to avoid during the transition.
2. Learn the Site Editor properly. Full-site editing is the foundation Phase 3 and 4 build on. If you are still editing only posts and avoiding the Site Editor, you are building on a shrinking island. Invest a weekend — it pays back for years.
3. Audit your custom blocks and page-builder dependence. The React swap and ongoing editor evolution reward standard blocks and punish exotic custom implementations. Inventory anything custom before the big releases land, not after.
4. Set up a staging workflow now. The next two years bring the highest-stakes core changes since 2018 — the React upgrade, real-time collaboration, AI features. A staging site turns each of those from a gamble into a test drive.
5. Follow the source, not the rumors. The Gutenberg plugin’s changelog, the Make WordPress Core blog, and the official roadmap are where the truth lives. Roadmap anxiety almost always comes from secondhand hype; the primary sources are refreshingly honest about what might slip.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Gutenberg finished? What phase is it in now?
Not finished — it is in Phase 3 (Collaboration) of four planned phases. Phase 1 (Easier Editing) shipped with WordPress 5.0 and Phase 2 (Customization) completed with the Site Editor in WordPress 6.3. Phase 3’s collaboration features are actively landing, and Phase 4 (Multilingual) is still in planning.
When will real-time collaborative editing come to WordPress?
There is no confirmed core release date. It was postponed from WordPress 7.0 for stability work and continues to progress through the Gutenberg plugin, where it is being beta-tested. The team stages this work carefully to avoid regressions, so expect it to arrive when it is genuinely stable rather than on a fixed schedule.
Will AI replace the need to learn the block editor?
No — AI in WordPress is being built as an assistant inside the editor, not a replacement for it. The AI Client, Abilities API, and the planned Guidelines feature all assume a human directing blocks. Understanding blocks will make you better at directing AI, not obsolete because of it.
Should I switch my classic theme to a block theme now?
For new projects, yes — start with block themes. For existing sites on classic themes, there is no emergency, but plan the migration: every future design feature targets blocks, and the Classic block is being deprecated from the inserter. Migrate on your schedule, not under pressure.
Where can I follow the Gutenberg roadmap reliably?
The official roadmap at wordpress.org/about/roadmap, the Make WordPress Core blog, and the Gutenberg plugin changelog on WordPress.org. These primary sources are honest about timelines and delays — far more reliable than social media hype about what is “coming soon.”
Final Thoughts
That meetup question — “is Gutenberg finished yet?” — deserved a better answer than laughter. The honest answer is: the editing revolution is done, the design revolution is done, and now comes the harder work of making WordPress a place where teams create together, where AI assists transparently, and where every language works natively.
Here is what eight years of watching this roadmap has taught me: WordPress’s future arrives gradually, then suddenly. The features feel distant until the release notes land, and then the people who prepared look like geniuses while everyone else scrambles. You now know what is coming — collaboration, AI assistance, design superpowers, multilingual core.
Pick one item from the action list and do it this week. Learn the Site Editor. Audit your custom blocks. Set up staging. Small preparations, made early, are what separate the sites that ride each release from the sites that get run over by it. The future is public, the plan is written down, and you are now reading from the same map the core team uses. That is an advantage — use it.
