WordPress 6.8 “Cecil” was released Tuesday. Named after American jazz pianist Cecil Taylor, the release focuses on performance, security, and the editing experience, with plenty also going on under the hood.
Jeff Paul, a long-time 10up-sponsored contributor who helped coordinate the release and published the official announcement on WordPress.org, posted on X that WordPress 6.8 is “bold, complex, and challenges convention,” just like Taylor’s free jazz classic Unit Structures.
Here are the key highlights:
Speculative loading
WordPress 6.8 introduces speculative loading, a new performance feature that preloads pages just before a user clicks, making navigation feel faster. Powered by the Speculation Rules API, it’s enabled by default on sites using pretty permalinks and supported in Chrome, Edge, and Opera. In browsers that don’t support it, pages just load as usual.
WordPress uses a conservative setup, preloading links only milliseconds before a user clicks — enough of a head start to noticeably speed up load times.
Before landing in Core, speculative loading was tested on more than 50,000 sites via the WordPress Core Performance Team’s Speculative Loading plugin. Sites using the plugin saw a median ~1.9% improvement in Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — a modest number, but a meaningful real-world gain.
Bcrypt password hashing
WordPress 6.8 makes a major security upgrade: user passwords are now hashed with bcrypt, replacing the aging phpass system used since 2007. The change makes password hashes significantly harder to crack and brings WordPress in line with modern best practices.
No action is needed — existing passwords still work, and users stay logged in after updating. Passwords will be rehashed automatically the next time someone logs in or changes theirs.
“We’re especially proud of our very own Director of WordPress Security, John Blackbourn, who led the work bringing bcrypt to WordPress core. It’s a big win for enterprise-grade security and authentication best practice.”
— Human Made, LinkedIn.
The update also improves how WordPress handles other security keys behind the scenes. Application passwords, reset keys, personal data request keys, and the recovery mode key now use the fast, secure BLAKE2b algorithm via Sodium.
Style Book support for Classic Themes
The Style Book gets a fresh layout in WordPress 6.8, with clearer labels and a more structured interface that makes it easier to view and edit global styles like colors and typography—all in one place.
For the first time, it also works with Classic Themes that include editor-styles.css or a theme.json file. That means more users can now preview design changes as they work—whether they’re editing CSS directly or using the Customizer. This feature was first introduced with Gutenberg 19.9.
Editor improvements
WordPress 6.8 brings a range of refinements to make editing faster, clearer, and more flexible.
You can now cut blocks from the toolbar, and reset color, duotone, and shadow settings with a single click, making it easier to start fresh without backtracking. The Command Palette adds shortcuts to create a new page or jump straight into the Site Editor from anywhere.
A new Starter Content category surfaces full-page layouts directly in the inserter — even if you’ve dismissed the New Page modal — now available for posts, pages, and custom post types.
Zoom Out View makes it easier to preview and swap section styles in context. And Design Tools continue to expand, with more spacing, border, and color controls across a broader range of blocks. Fonts now preview in the typography picker, and you can set a featured image directly from the Image block toolbar.
The Query Loop block gains support for sorting pages by menu order, ignoring sticky posts, and displaying a Query Total block to show how many results are returned.
There are also several updates to Data Views, the new content browsing interface introduced in 6.7. WordPress 6.8 improves focus handling, keyboard interactions, spacing options, and mobile usability, making content and media management more accessible and efficient.
Accessibility updates
WordPress 6.8 includes over 100 accessibility improvements across Core, the block editor, Customizer, and bundled themes.
Core changes include the removal of redundant title attributes, better skip links and ARIA markup in themes, and clearer screen reader feedback in the admin interface. The Customizer now respects motion preferences and restores proper heading structure for better navigation.
The block editor includes 70+ updates, improving labeling, focus management, and screen reader support. DataViews sees refinements to keyboard navigation, focus visibility, and semantic HTML for a smoother media browsing experience.
Other enhancements touch everything from password error messages and custom menu link validation to modals, tooltips, buttons, and global styles—making WordPress more usable for everyone.
Joe Dolson, a core committer and accessibility expert joined Kinsta’s Roger Williams to share more about what’s included in WordPress 6.8:
Performance enhancements
WordPress 6.8 includes a range of performance updates aimed at making the editing experience faster and more responsive—especially in the Site Editor and across complex blocks like Navigation.
Alongside speculative loading, which boosts frontend speed by preloading pages just before users click, this release introduces early support for the Interactivity API. Designed to make frontend interactions feel instant, the API lays the groundwork for rich, JavaScript-powered experiences—like live filters or inline previews—without requiring full page reloads or third-party frameworks.
The block editor also benefits from improvements to query caching, block type registration, and conditional logic—reducing unnecessary computations and speeding up render times.
A smaller squad, a big release
WordPress 6.8 was led by the smallest release team since WordPress 5.7. Just 10 people were tapped for leadership roles—down from 30 on the 6.3 team. Jeffrey Paul (10up) and Michelle Frechette took on a joint role combining release coordination and marketing.
Other leads included Joe McGill (10up), Jonathan Desrosiers (Bluehost) and George Mamadashvili (GoDaddy) who oversaw tech, Jb Audras (Whodunit) who triaged, Tammie Lister (Greyd GmbH, Kinsta, Guildenberg, and BigScoots) who led design, Felix Arntz (Google) who led performance, and Krupa Nanda (self employed) and oversaw testing.
Desrosiers, who helped assemble the team following Automattic’s decision to significantly cut back its contributions, described 6.8 as a “polish and bug fix” release. Notably, the smaller squad didn’t include many of the Automattic-sponsored contributors who typically lead major releases.
Still, contributors have rallied to ship a stable, well-rounded and widely celebrated release that includes many big ticket items that move WordPress forward.
More than 900 contributors from over 60 countries took part in the release, including more than 250 first-timers. Awesome Motive Project Manager David Bisset summed it up best:
“#WordPress 6.8 ‘Cecil’ is out. 🎉 Thanks to the over 900 contributors (including 250+ first timers) and their partners, family, therapists, pets, imaginary friends, parents. In more than 60 countries all over the world.”
Just before the release party wrapped up on Wednesday, WP Tavern founder Jeff Chandler thanked the release team and contributors for their work on WordPress 6.8: “Thank you everyone for your work on what looks to be the final major release of the year. May the slow down in the release cadence grant you all some time to relax and recuperate. See you all at the 6.9 release party in 2026,” Chandler posted in WordPress Slack.
WordPress 6.8 will be the only major release in 2025. The shift from the usual three-per-year cadence was announced after a Zoom call between project leaders and core committers. While the official reason cited flat ticket activity and reduced corporate contributions, it’s worth noting that Automattic, historically the project’s largest contributor, has reduced its pledged hours from nearly 4,000 per week last September to just 16 as of today.
For more details on all the changes included in WordPress 6.8, check out the WordPress 6.8 Feature Showcase, the documentation for 6.8, the WordPress 6.8 Field Guide, and the WordPress 6.8 Source of Truth.
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