What to expect from the WordPress 5.6 update

The new 5.6 Features and what to look out for

What is the release?

The final release of 2020 continues the annual tradition of a new default theme that is custom built to showcase the new features and functionality of the software. Continued progress on the block editor is especially clear in this release, which brings more blocks to more places, and fewer clicks to implement your layouts.

WordPress 5.6 also has lots of refinements to polish the developer experience. To learn more, subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog and pay special attention to the developer notes tag for updates on those and other changes that could affect your products.

The new features currently in development for WordPress 5.6 include:

Automatic updates for major WordPress Core releases (opt-in)
Update Gutenberg to the latest version with new features
A new default theme, Twenty Twenty-One
PHP 8 support
A public beta of full site editing
oEmbed changes
Additional Block Patterns

Two anticipated features – a new Navigation menu block and screen and block-based widgets – have unfortunately been removed from the 5.6 release features. Active development will resume for these features after the release of 5.6.

Deprecated Facebook And Instagram Embeds

Both Gutenberg and the Classic Editor use oEmbed requests to pull in content from Facebook and Instagram. Facebook, which owns Instagram, deprecated these types of embeds on October 24th, 2020. Therefore, WordPress has already removed them from the stable Core 5.5 release, and they will not be included in WordPress 5.6.