Each WordPress release celebrates an artist who has left an indelible mark on music.  WordPress 6.8, code-named “Cecil,” honors the legendary pianist and jazz pioneer Cecil Taylor.

Classically trained yet relentlessly unconventional, Taylor reimagined the piano as a percussive instrument—layering tone clusters, polyphony, and rhythm into a sound both chaotic and precise. His music defied expectation, finding form in disorder and harmony in dissonance.

That same spirit drives WordPress 6.8. Embrace its bold new features with the same curiosity and experimentation that defined Cecil’s sound.

Welcome to WordPress 6.8!

WordPress 6.8 polishes and refines the tools that you use every day, making your site faster, more secure, and easier to manage.  The Style Book now has a structured layout and works with Classic themes, giving you more control over global styles. Speculative loading speeds up navigation by preloading links before users navigate to them, bcrypt hashing strengthens password security automatically, and database optimizations improve performance.

Download WordPress 6.8 “Cecil”

A release polished to a high sheen.

The Style Book gets a cleaner look—and a few new tricks.

The Style Book has a new, structured layout and clearer labels, to make it even easier to edit colors, typography—almost all your site styles—in one place.

Plus, now you can see it in Classic themes that have editor-styles or a theme.json file.  Find the Style Book under Appearance > Design and use it to preview your theme’s evolution, as you edit CSS or make changes in the Customizer.

Editor improvements

Easier ways to see your options in Data Views, and you can exclude sticky posts from the Query Loop.  Plus, you’ll find lots of little improvements in the editor that smooth your way through everything you build.

Near-instant page loads, thanks to Speculative Loading

In WordPress 6.8, pages load faster than ever.  When you or your user hovers over or clicks a link, WordPress may preload the next page, for a smoother, near-instant experience. The system balances speed and efficiency, and you can control how it works, with a plugin or your own code.  This feature only works in modern browsers—older ones will simply ignore it without any impact.

Stronger password security with bcrypt

Now passwords are harder to crack with bcrypt hashing, which takes a lot more computing power to break.  This strengthens overall security, as do other encryption improvements across WordPress.  You don’t need to do anything—everything updates automatically.

Accessibility improvements

100+ accessibility fixes and enhancements touch a broad spectrum of the WordPress experience.  This release includes fixes to every bundled theme, improvements to the navigation menu management, the customizer, and simplified labeling.  The Block Editor has over 70 improvements to blocks, DataViews, and to its overall user experience.

Performance updates

WordPress 6.8 packs a wide range of performance fixes and enhancements to speed up everything from editing to browsing.  Beyond speculative loading, WordPress 6.8 pays special attention to the block editor, block type registration, and query caching.  Plus, imagine never waiting longer than 50 milliseconds—for any interaction.  In WordPress 6.8, the Interactivity API takes a first step toward that goal.

And much more

For a comprehensive overview of all the new features and enhancements in WordPress 6.8, please visit the feature-showcase website.

Check out what’s new

Learn more about WordPress 6.8

Learn WordPress is a free resource for new and experienced WordPress users.  Learn is stocked with how-to videos on using various features in WordPress, interactive workshops for exploring topics in-depth, and lesson plans for diving deep into specific areas of WordPress.

Read the WordPress 6.8 Release Notes for information on installation, enhancements, fixed issues, release contributors, learning resources, and the list of file changes.

Explore the WordPress 6.8 Field Guide.  Learn about the changes in this release with detailed developer notes to help you build with WordPress.

The 6.8 release squad

Every release comes to you from a dedicated team of enthusiastic contributors who help keep things on track and moving smoothly.  The team that has led 6.8 is a cross-functional group of contributors who are always ready to champion ideas, remove blockers, and resolve issues.

• Release Lead: Matt Mullenweg
• Release Coordination: Jeffrey Paul and Michelle Frechette
• Tech Leads: Joe McGill, Jonathan Desrosiers, and George Mamadashvili
• Triage Lead: Jb Audras
• Design Lead: Tammie Lister
• Performance Lead: Felix Arntz
• Test Lead: Krupa Nanda

Thank you, contributors

The mission of WordPress is to democratize publishing and embody the freedoms that come with open source.  A global and diverse community of people collaborating to strengthen the software supports this effort.

WordPress 6.8 reflects the tireless efforts and passion of more than 900 contributors in more than 60 countries all over the world. This release also welcomed over 250 first-time contributors! 

Their collaboration delivered more than 320 enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all—a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress open source community.

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More than 60 locales have fully translated WordPress 6.8 into their language making this one of the most translated releases ever on day one.  Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way.  Thank you to everyone who helps make WordPress available in 200 languages.

Last but not least, thanks to the volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users worldwide.

Get involved

Participation in WordPress goes far beyond coding. And learning more and getting involved is easy.  Discover the teams that come together to Make WordPress and use this interactive tool to help you decide which is right for you.