WordPress 7.1 Beta 3 is ready for download and testing! 

This beta release is intended for testing and development only. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, use a test environment or local site to explore the new features.

How to Test WordPress 7.1 Beta 3

You can test WordPress 7.1 Beta 3 in any of the following ways:

WordPress Beta Tester Plugin	Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream.
Direct Download	Download the Beta 3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
Command Line (WP-CLI)	Use this WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=7.1-beta3
WordPress Playground	Use a 7.1 Beta 3 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup required-just click and go!

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 7.1 is August 19, 2026. The full release schedule can be found here. Your help testing Beta and RC versions is vital to making this release as stable and powerful as possible. Thank you to everyone who contributes by testing!

Find out what’s new in WordPress 7.1: Read the Beta 1 announcement for details and highlights.

How important is your testing?

Testing for issues is a critical part of developing any software, and it’s a meaningful way for anyone to contribute – whether or not you have experience. Details on what to test in WordPress 7.1 are available here.

If you encounter an issue, please share it in the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so via WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against this list of known bugs.

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

What’s in WordPress 7.1 Beta 3?

For technical details on the more than 71 issues addressed since Beta 1, see the following links:

• Closed 7.1 WordPress Core Trac tickets since July 15, 2026
• 7.1 Gutenberg commits since July 15, 2026

Note: Beta 2 was released on July 17, 2026, as part of the WordPress 7.0.2 release and includes important security fixes.

Beta 3 introduces two improvements to styling.

Applying local style changes globally is no longer an all-or-nothing action. The Apply globally option in the block inspector now opens a quick review step, allowing you to choose which modified styles to apply globally while keeping the rest as local overrides.

Other notable fixes include improvements to media uploads: long animated GIF uploads no longer hang, images rotated using EXIF metadata are processed correctly, and uploading a single HEIC image in Safari no longer creates two entries.

The editor also includes additional fixes for Notes, responsive styling, and custom CSS. For developers, WordPress Coding Standards has been updated to version 3.4.0.

Unicode email address support will not be included in WordPress 7.1. The work will continue in a community plugin, allowing broader testing of compatibility, security, and data-handling considerations.

A Beta 3 haiku

Fresh bugs surface now,
click by click, we chase them down—
codebase grows steady.

Props to @krupajnanda, @annezazu,
@wildworks, @amykamala for proofreading and review.