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The second Release Candidate (“RC2”) for WordPress 6.9 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC2 on a test server and site.

Reaching this phase of the release cycle is an important milestone. While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.9 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 6.9 RC2 in four ways:

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 6.9 is December 2, 2025. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible.

Please continue checking the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.9-related posts in the coming weeks for more information.

What’s in WordPress 6.9 RC2?

Get a recap of WordPress 6.9’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC1, you can browse the following links:

• GitHub commits for 6.9 since November 11
• Closed Trac tickets since November 11

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? These recent posts cover some of the latest updates:

• Notes Feature in 6.9
• Abilities API in WordPress 6.9
• WordPress 6.9 Frontend Performance Field Guide
• Interactivity API’s client navigation improvements in WordPress 6.9
• Block Bindings improvements in WordPress 6.9
• Changes to the Interactivity API in WordPress 6.9
• Consistent Cache Keys for Query Groups in WordPress 6.9
• DataViews, DataForm, et al. in WordPress 6.9
• Preparing the Post Editor for Full iframe Integration
• Theme.json Border Radius Presets Support in WordPress 6.9
• Heading Block CSS Specificity Fix in WordPress 6.9
• Miscellaneous Developer-focused Changes in 6.9
• Modernizing UTF-8 support in WordPress 6.9

How you can contribute

WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

Get involved in testing

Testing for issues is crucial to the development of any software. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. 

Your help testing the WordPress 6.9 RC2 version is key to ensuring that the final release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.9. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report.  You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs. 

Curious about testing releases in general?  Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the#core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Update your theme or plugin

For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.9 beta releases. If you haven’t yet, make sure to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.9.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Test on your hosting platforms

Web hosts provide vital infrastructure for supporting WordPress and its users. Testing on hosting systems helps inform the development process while ensuring that WordPress and hosting platforms are fully compatible, free of errors, optimized for the best possible user experience, and that updates roll out to customer sites without issue.

Want to test WordPress on your hosting system? Get started with configuring distributed hosting tests here.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? मराठी? ಕನ್ನಡ?  You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. This release milestone (RC2) also marks the hard string freeze point of the 6.9 release cycle.

An RC2 haiku

A calm hillside sighs,
Work of many now complete —
RC2 stays true.

Props to @amykamala, @annezazu, @davidbaumwald, @westonruter and @joedolson for proofreading and review.