Celebrating 23 Years of WordPress

Published on May 27, 2026
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WordPress turns 23 on May 27, and it’s time to honor one of the biggest success stories in open-source software.

WordPress turns 23 Cake

This milestone is the latest in the journey of a platform that has been shaping the web since 2003. Just a week ago, WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong” was released, bringing native AI infrastructure and under-the-hood improvements into WordPress core to make the platform welcoming for both the agentic web and human visitors.

WordPress 7.0 is the product of a community that hasn’t slowed down over the decades.

WordPress by the numbers

Here are some that showcase the platform’s continued quest to democratize the web:

  • 60.5% of the CMS market uses WordPress
  • 49.4% of the top 1,000 websites run on WordPress
  • 56% of WordPress sites now run in languages other than English
  • 81 WordCamps were conducted in 2025 across 39 countries, attended by nearly 100,000 people

(Source: State of the Word 2025)

23 years of WordPress by the statistical numbers.

As WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg wrote earlier this year:

WordPress is a manifestation of that idea. Speaking of the ecosystem it has evolved into, our Founder and CEO Rahul Bansal put it succinctly in a 2025 interview:

rtCamp and the people who build WordPress

We have been a part of that universe since 2009, building enterprise solutions with WordPress. Contributing back to WordPress is how we’ve established our place in it.

Our engineers have contributed to 35 consecutive releases of the WordPress core, with 60 of our colleagues having contributed to WordPress 7.0 alone. Open-source communities thrive on stewardship, and participating in the community is something we hold dear.

To give WordPress core, plugins, and themes a standardized way to define their capabilities in the AI era, the Abilities API shipped in December 2025. Our colleague David Levine played an important role in shaping the Abilities API as a core component and is now one of the official maintainers. You can read more about what it unlocks

Similarly, Aditya Dhade is the Core Performance Team Rep and has been consistently making significant contributions. We are proud of our colleagues taking up positions of leadership and shaping the core software.

Every core release ships because of the hundreds who show up: designers, developers, testers, translators, educators, and event organizers. We are immensely grateful to all of you.

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Credits

Naweed

Naweed Chougle

Author

Naweed Chougle

Author

Naweed is a Senior Technical Content Writer at rtCamp, specializing in WordPress and enterprise CMS content. With over ten years of experience in the WordPress ecosystem, he creates blog posts,…

Aviral

Aviral Mittal

Editor

Aviral Mittal

Editor

Aviral Mittal is the Chief Marketing Officer at rtCamp, where he established and leads the marketing function, building and growing a team of 20+ specialists across content, SEO, design, and growth…

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