Co-founded WordPress on December 2 Matt Mullenweg, Executive Director Mary Hubbardand chief architect Matias Ventura took the stage in San Francisco, joined by staff and guests from around the world.
And for the first time, a major WordPress release was launched live during the keynote: WordPress 6.9 was released into the world as the audience watched.
If you missed the livestream, you can watch the full recording below:
Our favorite highlights from 2025
2025 was a milestone year for WordPress. The project released two major releases, welcomed record numbers of new contributors, and saw global adoption accelerate – especially in non-English markets.
This is what stood out:
- WordPress continues to support the open web. About 43% of all websites run on WordPress, with approx 60% CMS market share. Adoption grew among the top 1,000 sites 49.4% – an increase of 2.3% compared to last year.
- A truly global community. Over for the first time 56% of WordPress sites are in languages other than English. Japanese became the second most used language, and Japan reached that mark 58.5% website share and 83% CMS share.
- A thriving ecosystem. About 60,000 Plugins are now available and downloads are expected to reach 2.1 billion by the end of the year. The adoption of block themes grew 40%where 1,000 themes are passed on.
- Register the number of contributors. WordPress 6.8 had 921 contributors. WordPress 6.9 released 900including 230 starters.
- WordPress 6.9 launched live on stage. By the end of the keynote, more than 700,000 sites had already been updated.
Tip: Learn more about the most exciting WordPress 6.9 features for website owners and developers.
AI is central
This year’s AI panel was on display James LePage (Automatic), Philip (Google), and Jeff Paulus (10op).
And here is one of the central themes from the keynote: AI will be the foundation of WordPress.
Matt Mullenweg announced earlier this year that a special AI team has been formed. In just six months they shipped all four planned ‘building blocks’:
- Capabilities API: Exposes the capabilities of plugins, themes, and WordPress core to AI agents in a standardized, machine-readable format.
- WP AI client: An abstraction layer for communicating with any generative AI model – OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or others – so developers can write prompts without being locked into one provider.
- MCP adapter: Bridges the Abilities API with AI providers via the Model Context Protocol, allowing AI assistants to understand and act on WordPress.
Additionally, the keynote included a demo of Telexa tool that generates Gutenberg blocks from natural language.
During the keynote, Mullenweg showed how Nick Hamze used it to build a Lego price calculator and Google Calendar integration – without writing any code.
All these building blocks formed the basis for what the AI Panel for 7.0 previewed: a Workflows API for skill stringing, AI-enabled collaborative editing, and the WP AI Client that goes to the core.
AI features are not yet visible in the interface, but WordPress is now understandable to AI systems – and the foundation has been laid for what comes next.
Tip: WordPress.com users can also explore our AI website builder, which makes creating, designing, customizing, and launching your site much faster and easier.
WordPress around the world
The keynote also highlighted the increasingly global nature of WordPress:
- 81 WordCamps – community-organized conferences for WordPress users and contributors – took place in 39 countries this year. More than 5,200 volunteers organized these activities, reaching more than 100,000 people personally. And sixteen more are planned for the end of the year.
- Learn.wordpress.org served over 1.5 million users, with an average engagement time of 32% after WordCamp US 2025.
- Education programs are also expanding. Campus Connect brings WordPress to universities – Stephanie Garita Johnson from Universidad Fidélitas in Costa Rica talked about how students there are now earning academic credit for their contributions to open source.
- And inside Nicaragua, Youth Day brought together 75 children aged 8 to 20 to build their first WordPress sites – with teenagers teaching teenagers.
Ecosystem and infrastructure updates
WordPress also ships faster, is easier to test, and is more secure to update.
This year’s improvements focused on reducing friction for plugin developers and making it easier to create new sites and migrate existing sites:
- Reviewing plugins now takes less than 7 days thanks to AI-enabled assessment processes. The team is also processing approximately 100 more submissions per week than last year.
- A new 24-hour security window for automatic updates gives developers time to identify early adopter issues before widely rolling out updates.
- WordPress playground reached 1.4 million users from 227 countries this year. It now includes a file browser, a visual gallery of blueprints, and a stable CLI.
Question and answer session
The community Q&A covered several topics:
About domains and owning your online presence
Mullenweg emphasized that a domain is “your real estate on the Internet” – the thing that is truly yours. He encouraged everyone to get their own domain, and even buy one for children at birth. Without one, “you’re kind of like a digital sharecropper.”
About the ‘agentic web’ and AI
As AI tools begin to browse and trade on websites, Mullenweg shared ideas about offering markdown versions of pages for easier AI use and embedding micropayments for content attribution.
On open social platforms
He cited Bluesky as a positive example – where you can use your own domain as a username – and noted that X has improved handling of external links.
Discover WordPress 6.9 at WordPress.com
This year’s State of the Word made one thing clear: WordPress is evolving quickly – with an AI foundation, a growing global community, and tools that make building and collaborating easier than ever.
WordPress 6.9 is also live on WordPress.com. Discover the new features in our detailed posts:
And if you missed the livestream, the full recording is available above.
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