May 8 – May 21, 2026

If things have felt a little busier around WordPress.com these past two weeks, there’s a good reason: we shipped a lot, including a new home for your podcast, a weekly letter for close friends, and a new Mac app that uses your site context, so you can get more done without leaving your flow.

Here’s what’s new on WordPress.com to help you create, publish, and grow:

Podcasting

Jetpack Podcast is now live on WordPress.com

Launch a podcast that lives alongside your blog and newsletter — no separate hosting platform or tool needed. Find it in your site sidebar at Jetpack → Podcast.

• If you have a Free site, you can publish episodes by linking to audio hosted elsewhere, with Distribution and Settings tabs to manage your show.
• If you have a Premium plan or above, you can host your audio on WordPress.com, see stats, manage episodes, and embed your show with the new Episode Player Block.

Learn more about running your podcast on WordPress.com in our blog post.

Newsletters

Lately — weekly letters to your closest readers (beta)

For the corner of your life where you’d rather email a few close friends than post to the world. 

Lately is a weekly letter for the people closest to you, compiled automatically from notes you send during the week, and delivered every Friday to the friends you choose. 

It runs through Telegram: message the WordPress Agent as things happen, and it handles sending your curated newsletter each week. Available now as a beta for new sites.

AI

WordPress Workspace — one app for all your WordPress.com work (beta)

If you blog, publish, or run a business on WordPress, your site has been accumulating useful context since day one: your voice, audience, archive, offers, media, guidelines, and the shape of your work.

Workspace is a new Mac app that puts all of that to work. At its center, the WordPress Agent helps you write, research, and ship without you having to start from scratch every time you want to get something done.

Use it to draft a post from your notes, update a page, generate an image, or get a quick answer about your site — all from a keyboard shortcut and without leaving what you’re working on.

Available now as a beta on every WordPress.com plan — learn more and try it today.

Heading to WordCamp Europe? There’s an assistant for that

If you’re heading to WordCamp Europe in Kraków in just a few weeks, open Telegram and message @wordcamp_agent_bot.

It’s a free travel and conference assistant for attendees. It can help plan your trip, browse the schedule, remember which sessions you care about, and ping you before they start.

It’s your WordCamp assistant in your pocket — chat with it today.

WordPress Studio

A library of ready-made WordPress setups, now built into WordPress Studio

Calling all developers, designers, and vibe coders: starting a new WordPress project locally just got a lot faster.

The new Blueprints Gallery in WordPress Studio (desktop version 1.9.0 and later) gives you a curated library of pre-configured WordPress setups — for blogging, ecommerce, plugin testing, design exploration, and more — that you can launch as a local site in a couple of clicks.

Use the Live Preview button to try a Blueprint before you commit to it, and then sync with a WordPress.com hosting plan when you’re ready to go live.

If you’ve been hand-configuring the same kind of WordPress site over and over, this is your shortcut. 

Just for fun

Achievements, badges, and activity streaks for everyone

Rewards for showing up, making progress, and getting things done.

WordPress.com users now have an Achievements page. Track your daily activity streak, earn badges for milestones, and check out other people’s achievements when they make their profiles public.

Do you know the Konami code?

Try it on a logged-in WordPress.com page. Try it in WordPress Studio. Two different surprises, both worth finding.

Type ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA on your keyboard to unlock these easter eggs.

Fixes and improvements

We’ve also shipped reliability and polish updates across WordPress.com, like:

• Adding a “Performed by” filter to the Activity Log so you can drill into actions by specific people, apps, or system events.
• Adding a QR-code sign-in page for the WooCommerce mobile app, so you can sign in by scanning instead of typing.
• Updating the block editor with the latest improvements and bug fixes.