The release of the final version of WordPress 7.0 was scheduled for 9 April 2026, the day of the Contributor Day at WordCamp Asia, but the cycle has changed in the calendar and for the moment there is no date, we will have to wait a few weeks.
This was announced earlier this month by Matias Ventura, the release leader. The extension of the release cycle is due to a review of the database architecture for the real-time collaboration option. Apparently, the current system, based on post meta, causes cache problems and it has been concluded that a new dedicated table will be needed.
One of the most important new features of this release is the introduction of a native real-time collaboration feature and to support this in the core, a new custom table was proposed. WordPress has ensured that, although there was a general consensus that it would be useful for collaborative editing and synchronisation coordination, it was postponed due to uncertainties related to timing and design.
Overall, the goal of including collaborative editing in 7.0 as an activatable option is to give the WordPress ecosystem time to adapt to such a major change. For hosting providers, this may have implications for WordPress resource usage and database interactions, and for the end user, which I understand could be reflected in significant performance issues.
Due to a combination of rapid iterations around data storage solutions and cache invalidation strategies, discussions were held prior to RC2, the latest version released.
This led to a course of action to address outstanding concerns, as content changes are still stored in "postmeta", while recognition/presence information of users in session is moved to "transients". This approach is supposed to avoid the problems of fast and frequent cache invalidation, with special treatment for collaborative editing meta fields.
