WordPress is dropping support for PHP in the upcoming 6.3 release, which is expected on August 8.
WordPress minimum supported version has sat at PHP 5.6.20 since 2019, and will be updated to 7.0.0 in the next release.
The minimum supported version was last adjusted WordPress 5.2 in 2019, and WordPress John Blackbourn said...
There's no usage percentage that PHP version must fall below except historically the project maintainers have used 5% as the baseline.
Now that usage of PHP 5.6 is well below that at 3.9% and dropping by around 0.1% every few weeks, plans to increase the minimum supported PHP version can move forward...
Blackbourn also emphasized that WordPress support for PHP 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2 is very good and contributors may soon act on proposal for the criteria that would enable them to remove the beta support label on new PHP versions.
The decision to bump the minimum supported version is happening which drew little resistance.
sites that remain on PHP 5.6 cannot upgrade beyond WordPress 6.2, they will still security updates, as the project currently backports them to versions 4.1+.
The bump to 7.0.0 for the minimum supported version will have many benefits for WordPress ecosystem of themes and plugins, will reduce usage for upgraded websites, and provide better security and improvements to core tooling...
The team will continue to usage of PHP versions and work with the team to encourage users and hosting companies to upgrade their versions of PHP as swiftly as possible.
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