TL;DR: State of the Word 2025 Key Updates
The State of the Word 2025 event highlighted the continued global expansion of WordPress, the launch of version 6.9, and foundational strategic investments in AI that focus on empowering users and contributors.
- Market Dominance: WordPress powers over 40% of the web and accounts for approximately 60% of the CMS market.
- Global Adoption: Over 56% of WordPress sites are now in non-English languages. Japanese is the second most popular language used in WordPress today.
- Enterprise Use: WordPress is growing among top-tier sites, now used by 49.4% of the world's top 1000 websites, an increase of 2.3% from last year.
- Ecosystem Health: The ecosystem features over 60,000 approved plugins (up 68% since 2024), totaling 74,000 plugins and themes. There have been 2.1 billion plugin downloads this year.
- Block Themes: Adoption of block themes has grown by over 40%, with more than a thousand block themes now available.
The latest version, WordPress 6.9 (codenamed "Gene"), was released live during the address. It is described as fast, polished, and built for collaboration.
- Collaboration Tools: Version 6.9 introduces notes to the block editor, allowing authors and collaborators to leave comments and feedback attached directly to specific blocks.
- New Blocks and Design: Updates include the new accordion block and a new typography option called stretchy text, which automatically adjusts font size to fill a container.
- Developer Focus: The release brings significant foundational work, including the Abilities API, HTML API, and Interactive API.
- User Interface: The command palette is now accessible across the entire admin experience, allowing for quick navigation.
WordPress established its first dedicated AI team earlier this year. The strategy focuses on tools that support contributors and site builders, rather than replacing them, seeing AI as an augmentation force comparable to electrification.
- Four Foundational Building Blocks (Delivered by 6.9):
- Abilities API: A unified registry that allows both human and AI systems to understand and execute tasks on a WordPress site. This is designed for flexibility, similar to the plugin hook system.
- WP AI Client: A uniform, agnostic API for communicating with any generative AI models (e.g., Google, OpenAI, Anthropic), ensuring site owners control which provider they use.
- MCP Adapter: Allows external AI services (like Claude) to pilot the WordPress website using the Abilities protocol.
- AI Experiments Plugin: A resource for developers and end-users to test and interact with AI features powered by these blocks.
- Accelerated Development: AI tools are helping to scan code, find vulnerabilities, and speed up processes, resulting in the plugin review backlog dropping to under seven business days.
- Next Steps (7.0): Future plans include the sister API Workflows to string Abilities together for deterministic automations, and further integration of AI with collaborative editing features.
- Creative Tools: The Telex Project uses AI to create rich, interactive Gutenberg blocks via natural language prompts, allowing users to build complex elements (like a pricing comparison tool or a game) quickly and affordably.
- WordCamps: The number of WordCamps grew by over a third in a single year, with 81 events spanning 39 countries, reaching over 100,000 people.
- Learning Resources: The learning platform learn.wordpress.org served over 1.5 million users this year, with significant improvement in user engagement time.
- Campus Connect: This initiative expanded across global universities (like Universidad Fidélitas in Costa Rica), allowing students to earn academic credit for contributing real work to open source.
- Youth Outreach: Youth Day in Nicaragua saw 75 kids (ages 8 to 20) building their first WordPress sites, with sessions led by teenagers.