If your dashboard still says WordPress 6.1, you’re looking at a 2022 time capsule. WordPress 6.1 “Misha” shipped on November 1, 2022, as the third and final major WordPress release of 2022, bringing Twenty Twenty-Three (a new default theme with 10 style variations), fluid typography, more design tools across more blocks, and a more refined template experience.
WordPress hasn’t stood still since. The 6.1 branch was followed by a run of maintenance and security point releases, and as of this writing (August 2026) the current version is WordPress 7.0.2, released July 17, 2026. This page covers what shipped in 6.1, the point releases that followed, and what to do if your site is still running it.
What’s new in WordPress 6.1
Here are the changes site owners and developers actually received.
WordPress 6.1 new features for end users
- Twenty Twenty-Three, a new default theme powered by 10 unique style variations and tagged “Accessibility Ready” (learn more)
- More design tools across more blocks, including new spacing presets for faster, more consistent margins and padding (learn more)
- An expanded and refined template experience and template options, including a custom template for posts and pages in the Site Editor
- A new search-and-replace tool for template parts, making headers and footers quicker to create and edit
- A better-organized document settings panel for posts and pages, improving features like the template picker and scheduler
- Inner block support in the Quote and List blocks, so you can add a heading inside a quote, for example
- Improved block placeholders: the Image block placeholder now previews custom borders and duotone filters before you select an image
- Refined modal interfaces and preferences improvements
- Automatic navigation block selection with fallbacks: you can edit the menu that’s open without hunting for it, and the mobile menu adds new icon options
- A one-click toggle that applies locking settings to every block inside a containing block, like Group, Cover, and Column blocks
- Faster block theme discovery, with a block theme filter and pattern previews in the Themes Directory
- Persistent Site Editor settings, saved per user, so your preferences stay consistent across browsers and devices
- Accessibility updates, with more than 60 resolved tickets, including Twenty Twenty-Two and Twenty Twenty-Three becoming the first default block themes marked accessibility ready
- Performance updates, with more than 25 resolved tickets, headlined by database query caching in WP_Query and faster REST API responses
WordPress 6.1 new features for developers
- The ability to opt into appearance tools to make any theme more powerful
- A streamlined style system: the CSS rules for margin, padding, typography, colors, and borders now live in one place in the styles engine
- Starter patterns for any post type: the starter patterns modal now appears when you create a new instance of any post type, not just pages as in 6.0 (learn more)
- Evolution of layout options including a new constrained option and the ability to disable layout options
- Content lock patterns for more curation options, giving you control over which parts of a pattern stay editable
- Expanded support for query loop blocks
- Block-based template parts in classic themes, a gradual-adoption bridge for themes that aren’t ready for full site editing
- Filter theme.json data (learn more)
- Fluid typography: define font sizes that adapt for comfortable reading on any screen size
- The ability to style elements inside blocks, like buttons, headings, or captions, in theme.json
How WordPress 6.1 came together
Here’s what’s inside the time capsule. In early June 2022, Matías Ventura from the WordPress core development team published an early WordPress 6.1 roadmap covering the main areas of work anticipated for the release.
“The tune of the release will be to refine the experiences introduced in 5.9 and 6.0, weave the various flows into more coherent and fulfilling experiences for users, maintainers, and extenders, and close some gaps in functionality as we start to look towards Phase 3 of the Gutenberg roadmap,” Ventura said at the time.
The roadmap highlighted five focus areas: the template editor (browsing and editing your site’s structure, with the aim of unifying the template editor and post editor experiences), building with patterns (tailoring patterns for custom post types and block types), global styles, blocks and design tools (webfont management, responsive typography, and an expanded block toolset), and themes and wider adoption (letting existing themes gradually adopt features like template parts, plus broader access to theme.json editing).
The first Beta, a version of the WordPress 6.1 software under development, was released on September 21, and the last one was released on October 4. During the Beta phase, core contributors’ focus was on testing and fixing bugs. Some features from Beta weren’t guaranteed to be included in the final release, however.
Then WordPress 6.1 headed into the home stretch with five release candidates, released on October 11, October 18, October 25, October 27, and October 28. Release candidates are the final stages in the version release cycle, signaling the potential to be a final release to the public. By Release Candidate 1, approximately 100 items had been addressed since Beta 3, bringing the total number of updates and bug fixes since the release of WordPress 6.0 in May 2022 to more than 2,000.
Building upon WordPress 5.9 and 6.0
Because the WordPress core team is continually discussing and developing new features and bug fixes, and testing them in beta releases, it is able to put out new major versions of WordPress quite quickly. WordPress 5.9, which introduced the hotly anticipated Full Site Editing, was released on January 25, 2022. And WordPress 6.0, dubbed “Arturo,” went live on May 24, 2022.
Version 6.0 was a massive release in its own right, with nearly 1,000 enhancements and bug fixes spanning the block editor, style variations for block themes, block locking controls, new template options, and performance work across caching and taxonomy queries. For the full rundown, see the WordPress 6.0 post above.
WordPress 6.1.1 and the 6.1.x point releases
WordPress 6.1 didn’t stand still after launch day. WordPress 6.1.1, a short-cycle maintenance release, arrived on November 15, 2022, with 29 bug fixes in Core and 21 bug fixes for the block editor.
The 6.1 branch received additional maintenance and security backports after 6.1.1, but it is no longer actively maintained; the full history of the branch is cataloged in the WordPress.org release archive. A site still on 6.1.x lacks the fixes and security improvements shipped only in newer versions.
Is WordPress 6.1 still supported?
Not meaningfully. The 6.1 time capsule was sealed long ago. As of this writing, the current version of WordPress is 7.0.2, released July 17, 2026, and the official release archive is blunt about older branches: “Only the most recent in the 7.0 series is safe to use and actively maintained.” A site still on WordPress 6.1.x is several major versions, and several years of security fixes, behind.
How to update from WordPress 6.1 safely
The update path is the same one the official Version 6.1 documentation points to (Dashboard > Updates in your site’s admin area), with a little preparation first:
- Back up first. Take a full backup of your site’s files and database before touching anything.
- Test on staging if you can. A jump of several major versions is worth rehearsing on a staging copy, so you catch theme or plugin problems before your visitors do.
- Update from the dashboard. Go to Dashboard > Updates, run the core update, and then bring your plugins and themes current too.
WordPress 6.1 FAQ
When was WordPress 6.1 released?
WordPress 6.1 “Misha” was released on November 1, 2022. It was the third and final major WordPress release of 2022, following 5.9 “Josephine” in January and 6.0 “Arturo” in May.
What is WordPress 6.1.1?
WordPress 6.1.1 was a short-cycle maintenance release that shipped on November 15, 2022, two weeks after 6.1. It delivered 29 bug fixes in Core and 21 bug fixes for the block editor.
What was the default theme in WordPress 6.1?
Twenty Twenty-Three. It shipped with 10 distinct style variations and is tagged “Accessibility Ready,” so you can change your site’s whole look with a single click without switching themes.
Is WordPress 6.1 still safe to use?
No. WordPress.org’s release archive states that only the most recent release in the current 7.0 series is safe to use and actively maintained. If a site is still on 6.1.x, back it up and update from Dashboard > Updates.
Stay tuned for more updates
Still on WordPress 6.1? Back up your site, test the upgrade on staging, and move to the current release. For future WordPress release notes and maintenance guidance, subscribe by email.
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