WordPress developers have decided to drop PHP 5 support in the upcoming 6.3 release, which is expected on August 8.
Right now, the minimum supported PHP version for WordPress is PHP 5.6.20, which was set back in 2019. In the next release, the minimum supported version will be PHP 7.0.0. However, the recommended PHP version will remain the same – 7.4 or higher.
“The minimum supported PHP version was last adjusted back in 2019 with the WordPress 5.2 release, and since then the use of PHP 5.6 has dropped to 3.9% among tracked WP installations as of July 2023,” WordPress developer John Blackburn shared the statistics.
“Historically, we’ve used 5% as a threshold for when to stop supporting a particular version of PHP. However, I will note that this is not formally recorded anywhere. Today, when the percentage of PHP 5.6 usage has dropped below 3.9% and continues to drop every few weeks by 0.1%, we have no reason to stay at that minimum version.”
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