The Findings

These are the statistically significant findings that stood out to us when analyzing the results of the State of the Community 2026 survey.

The aggregated results that these findings are based on, including all free-written responses that we were given permission to publish, and more detailed information about the State of the Community survey, including the survey design principles, methodology and known limitations of the 2026 survey, and the full 2026 survey instrument, are available on The WPOCC’s public GitHub:

• https://github.com/thewpcommunitycollective/programs/tree/main/projects/state-of-the-community

We welcome further analysis of the data under the license terms specified in license.md: Documentation and report text — CC BY-NC 4.0l Aggregate data — CC BY 4.0.

How to read these findings

We have specified percentages of groups wherever possible, either representing a percentage of the total number of respondents (431) or the specified subgroup.

A number score of 1-5 (e.g. 4.65, 2.43) is used to represent sentiment or signify importance (1 being very negative/least important, and 5 being very positive/most important). The score is the result of the averaged 1-5 rankings of the responses of the group being cited.

Results written as a positive or negative number (e.g. -28, +2) are net scores. A net score is the share of a group who answered positively (4 or 5) minus the share who answered negatively (1 or 2). Neutral answers count toward the group’s size but do not move the number. A net score of +100 means every respondent in the group is positive. A net score of 0 means positive and negative answers balance exactly. A net score of −100 means every respondent is negative. Therefore, a group at −28 has 28 percentage points more people feeling negative than positive about that question. A group at +2 has 2 percentage points more people feeling positive than negative about that question. Net scores are measured in percentage points, so the distance between two of them is stated in points rather than as a percentage difference: a group at −28 sits 30 points below a group at +2.

Finding 01

81.7% of respondents are positive about open source. 32.7% are positive about WordPress.

The survey asked the same pair of questions separately about both WordPress and open source: Have your feelings changed in the past 24 months (Q29), and, if so, in which direction did you feelings change (Q30)?

Half of all respondents (50.1%) feel positively about open source while simultaneously feeling neutral or negative about WordPress. 27.8% are positive about open source and while feeling negatively about WordPress.

How feelings changed over the past 24 months

The survey asked the same change question about the WordPress project and about open source software. All 431 respondents.

Feel more negativelyNo change reportedFeel more positively

73.8% feel more negatively about the WordPress project than they did two years ago. On open source software the figure is 23.9%, and two-thirds report no change at all.

The people most committed to open source are the most negative about WordPress

The survey has two independent measures of cause commitment outside of WordPress: whether someone contributes to other open source projects, and whether they volunteer for causes outside open source entirely.

	n	WordPress now	WordPress future	Open source values (of 5)
Contributes to open source elsewhere	228	−18	−28	4.64
Does not	203	+9	+1	4.36
Volunteers outside WordPress and open source	251	−12	−24	4.61
Does not	180	+4	−2	4.37

Contributes elsewhere: p = .0002 on present sentiment, p < .0001 on future. Volunteers elsewhere: p = .027 and p = .0035.

52.9% of respondents contribute to open source projects outside WordPress. That group rates “open source values” as important at 4.64. They also rate WordPress’s future 28 points lower than other groups.

Both the respondents who contributed to other open source projects and the respondents who volunteered outside of WordPress and open source view WordPress’s future more negatively (-28 and -24, respectively), despite placing a high importance on open source values (4.64/5 and 4.61/5).

Additional Data Points

Respondents ranked four of the five items in the survey’s open source importance matrix as very important: open source software 4.59, the sustainability of open source projects 4.58, open source values 4.51, and open source in WordPress 4.51.

From the Open Responses

Optimism persists:

I trust that the community will continue driving WordPress in the right direction, despite management.

Open source will win out as more closed walled ecosystem projects merge or close.

People describe a values misalignment:

Without naming names, business decisions in the WordPress ownership have unfortunately soured my opinion of the whole project, and made me realize I was contributing to and promoting an ecosystem with values I did not share and disagreed with.

I feel like there is too much policing of ideas or over amplifying the ideas of the CEO. It feels very top down run like a business and not an open source project at times.

Leadership that does not have the health and prosperity of the open source project and community in mind.

Several respondents describe the practical settlement they have arrived at to keep the software and leave the project:

When the leader of the project is actively trying to hurt businesses in the ecosystem, I have no interest in participating officially in any way. I’ll use the software, I’ll build things for the software, and I’ll go to alternative events like PressConf.

And a smaller number are already measuring WordPress against the wider open source world:

I care more about software freedoms as a whole than I care about “open source” alone.

The EU is tired of US dependency, and open source will play a key role in that. If Drupal manages to get their shit together, which is a big If, then it’s all downhill for WordPress. Heck even Typo3 is making a comeback.

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Finding 02

77.3% of respondents feel differently toward WordPress than they did two years ago. For 95.5% of them, they feel worse.

We asked whether respondents’ feelings about the WordPress open source project had changed over the past 24 months, and, if they had, we asked how they had changed. 77.3% said their feelings had changed. Of those whose feelings had changed, 95.5% said they had changed for the worse and 4.5% said for the better, a ratio of 21:1.

Souring was consistent across groups

We tested souring, or a feeling of increasing negativity, against twelve ways of dividing the community. Eight of the twelve show no statistically significant variation at all.

Share who feel more negatively than 24 months ago, by group

Each dot is one group. The vertical line is the survey-wide rate of 73.8%. Groups under 15 respondents are excluded.

Gender, age, tenure, work role, location, income dependence, and whether someone contributes to open source or volunteers elsewhere — none of these predicts whether a respondent soured. The spread on gender looks wide but is not significant: it is driven by non-binary respondents, at 3.5% of the sample the smallest group we report.

Four divisions, all related to respondent’s working relationship to the project, do show a variation.

• People who do not use AI in their work soured more: 85.4% compared to 69.2% of AI users.
• Lapsed event attendees soured most of any group defined by behavior: 86.2%, compared to 64.3% of those who have never attended but would like to
• Indirectly paid contributors soured more than either the paid or the unpaid: 85.1%, compared to 64.7% of those paid directly (p = .008). (Indirectly paid contributors are people who contribute in WordPress for work, but are not required to.)
• The very active soured least: 54.5%, compared to 78.9% of the moderately active (p = .038), who soured the most.

Among respondents who describe themselves as positive about the project right now, 41.8% say they still feel worse than they did two years ago.

From the Open Responses

Many respondents cited a values misalignment:

In the past 24 months I have grown increasingly distrustful of WordPress leadership, and am investigating other tools as a result.

I look at the lived values. Those are not great to look at in the last 24 months.

Without naming names, business decisions in the WordPress ownership have unfortunately soured my opinion of the whole project, and made me realize I was contributing to and promoting an ecosystem with values I did not share and disagreed with.

The three responses below are all from people who told us they still feel positive about the WordPress project today.

I used to run a Meetup, but that stopped when the WordPress / WP Engine lawsuit started as everyone wasn’t sure what was going to happen.

I was an organizer for several WordCamp events, but future organizers have been somewhat unsubtle about how my participation no longer is welcome.

Concerns regarding the current “Benevolent Dictator for Life” make me less interested in contributing to the project.

For others the change has already ended their contribution:

I used to report bugs and participate in bugtracker discussions, but have become disillusioned with the management and ownership direction the project is taking.

No longer have faith in the development of the project and community. No longer feel my contributions are important or impactful.

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Finding 03

Three in four respondents are negative or unsure about WordPress’s future (but they haven’t all left yet)

When asked how they feel about the future of the WordPress open source project, 39.0% of all respondents said they feel negative or very negative and 36.7% said neutral or unsure, a combined 75.6% of the survey between them. 24.4% were positive.

Sentiment toward the project now, and toward its future

All 431 respondents, same five-point scale, asked as two separate questions.

Very negativeNegativeNeutral / unsurePositiveVery positive

Negativity is almost flat between the two questions — 38.1% now against 39.0% for the future. What changes is that positive sentiment falls by more than eight points and the neutral bloc absorbs almost all of it. Of those positive about the project today, 36% move to neutral when asked about its future; 7% move to negative.

The same thing shows up respondent by respondent. 62.6% give the future exactly the rating they give the present. 22.5% rate it lower. 14.8% rate it higher.

What the negative half is describing

Respondents negative about the future were asked what is driving that feeling. Their answers reflect instability:

Matt’s self-destructive behaviour makes me less certain about WordPress’s future. His ill advised lawsuits, his erratic leadership, and his obsequious followers means that I cannot trust WP is in the best hands.

The behaviour of Matt & the addition of AI integration. I’m watching closely his this plays out and if WP continues in this direction.

The conflicts in the community make me believe that it is causing instability which could also cause instability in my livelihood, which has made me leave the WP area for work and out of web development as a whole. Also, the lack of support and understanding for community members is astounding.

Too much infighting with a good amount turning client facing. We are already in the direction of looking to build in other platforms.

The rise of AI, and what it means for the future of the web.

What the unsure middle sounds like

Of those unsure about the future, 79.7% say their feelings about the project soured over the past 24 months. They are spread evenly across participation level, pay status and tenure.

There’s an elephant in this room. That elephant is the reason the WordPress roadmap is diverging from what site owners need.

Leadership is really messy. Doesn’t project confidence towards the project.

Consistant and constructive leadership would be nice.

We have to fix the leadership to re-unite the community to successful mange the tasks and changes we are facing

I really wish we could all focus on growing the pie again.

One respondent in this group registered similar disappointment about us:

I truly believe that the WP community needs to be differently organized than it is today. My hopes were with WPCC. Unfortunately, it turned out to be (rather evolved into) US-centric and, therefore, is not helpful for the greater worldwide WP community.

What the positive quarter is holding onto

Respondents positive about the future were asked what supports that feeling, and they named the software, the install base, and each other.

The product is evolving with technology, is still very relevant, still has an enormous install base and is still backed by a very active community

While I believe some evolution is necessary, I also believe the community has the talent and inclination to make it happen.

I believe there are many wonderful people who collaborate generously, and even though we don’t know what the future holds, I trust that all these years of work and care will be maintained and evolve with society.

Keeping up to date, lots of nice innovation too like PHP wasm and playground. Huge amount of activity currently

The ecosystem appears to remain strong despite some of the negative vibes by certain people.

Some of the comments focused on endurance:

It’s just software. Software keeps going as long as people use it. And people use it!

WP is solid and there’s so many exciting things going on, but there’s also too much emphasis on javascript and there’s Matt’s legal woes and the risk of Automattic fucking WP over

Matt’s tenacity

The majority have not left completely

The people who are negative or unsure about the future are, overwhelmingly, still using WordPress, still following it, and even still calling themselves part of it.

	Negative about the future (39.0% of respondents)	Unsure about the future (36.7%)
Still use the WordPress software	89.9%	94.9%
Rate the WordPress software important to them	89.9%	94.9%
Still follow project updates and discussion	73.2%	79.1%
Still participate at some level	78.0%	82.9%
Generate income using WordPress	54.8%	63.9%
Still identify as members of the community	59.5%	74.1%

Nine in ten of those most pessimistic about where WordPress is going still use it every day and still say it matters to them.

Maybe one day I’ll give up with all this, but not yet !

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Finding 04

Governance and leadership is the problem the community reports most

We asked whether respondents had personally experienced or witnessed seven kinds of problem in the WordPress community (Q46). Problems with project leadership or governance was the highest from each category: 37.4% had experienced problems with project leadership or governance personally, 73.3% had experienced or witnessed them. 26.7% had not encountered any problems with project leadership or governance.

Problems experienced or witnessed in the WordPress community

All 431 respondents. The darker segment is people who experienced the problem themselves; the lighter segment is people who witnessed it happening to others.

Leadership and governance leads on personal experience by more than five points over the next-highest issue, and is the only problem a clear majority of respondents have been personally affected by.

Governance is also one of the things people say they value most

Of thirteen aspects of the project we asked respondents to rate (Q34), WordPress governance ranks fifth at 4.17 out of 5, with 76.6% calling it important. It sits above the WordPress community itself (4.13) and above WordPress leadership (4.04), behind only security, the software, web standards and open source values.

Asked what matters when deciding whether to participate in the project at all, project governance and policies scores 3.85, with 66.4% calling it important, more than the project roadmap, mentorship, and financial incentives.

Who reports it

Experience of governance problems do not vary significantly by gender, tenure, pay status, location, or relationship to events. The only differentiator is how involved someone is.

Level of community participation	Personally experienced governance problems
Moderately active	50.0%
Occasional	41.0%
Observational only	37.1%
Inactive	31.4%
Very active	25.0%
Do not participate	17.1%

p = .008. All other segment comparisons on this item are not significant.

What respondents are asking for

The remedies respondents propose are strikingly consistent, and they are structural rather than personal. Across the open responses the same three words recur: transparency, accountability, and new model of leadership/governance.

Abysmal, unaccountable leadership with zero guardrails.

No transparency, no great structure or shared leadership

[…] there are no governance structures in place to temper or mitigate rash decisions.

This project needs real governance, it needs more than a single person to determine the future. I think it is probably too far gone at this point.

WordPress ecosystem needs stability and must be a foundation to lead the decisions not only one person

WP leadership (MM) needs to be replaced by a community board. That way big companies will feel welcome again to contribute to the project.

WordPress is very important software but needs to improve with new js technologies. Also is very important leadership change to a foundation

That leadership and governance is less US/ Matt centric

Wp meeds a new governance model and leadership, that cares about the community and does not try to ahove ai stuff for sake of doing it.

Additional Data Points

19 respondents say they have filed a code of conduct report. 14 of them say it was not resolved. Six say it was resolved; one respondent indicates both, presumably from separate reports. These are small numbers and we are reporting them as counts rather than percentages, but they are the only direct evidence the survey collected about whether the community’s formal complaint process works. Respondents who filed a report are more likely than others to have subsequently stepped back from community participation, at 47.4%.

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Finding 05

Participation is contracting, and the people stepping back have been in the community more than a decade

Over the past 24 months, 38.7% of respondents decreased their participation in the WordPress community while 15.1% increased it, a contraction ratio of roughly 2.5:1.

The contraction is concentrated in the veterans

47.5% of respondents with ten or more years behind them have reduced their participation, against 30.8% of everyone with less tenure (p = .005).

Tenure is measured for 364 of the 431 respondents. The survey asked current community members how long they have been part of it, and asked people who once considered themselves members but no longer do how long they were — the same six answer options in both cases. We combine the two. The remaining respondents say they have never considered themselves community members, and were not asked about tenure.

Change in community participation over 24 months, by years in the community

Both sides use the same scale, so bar lengths are directly comparable. Groups with fewer than 15 respondents are excluded.

Respondents with 10–15 years in the community are the most likely to have stepped back, at 50.0%, followed by those with 15 or more years at 45.2%. Together those two cohorts are 70.6% of everyone with a tenure answer. Read as five separate bands the gradient is not statistically reliable (p = .09); read as a single ten-year threshold it is (p = .005). The 6–10 year cohort is the only one where increases come close to matching reductions.

What stepping back looks like

Most respondents describe stepping back as an accumulation of decisions:

I used to be very active and a frequent speaker. I have pulled back as I have reconsidered who benefits from my efforts. I have seen people use my work to fuel movements I would not have chosen to support personally.

I participated in several Trac issues, providing feedback or submitting patches. None were closed within 5 years, most were not closed in 10 years. I’ve basically decided that submitting code is not worth the time.

I stopped as it was the combination of untransparency, leadership AND the fact my time is now very limited then before.

I used to attend more than 8 wordcamps a year and organized a bunch. It became too burdensome to run my local meetup and after doing one national wordcamp I gave up because of the stress it caused.

My main day to day work has largely shifted away from WordPress, most WordPress projects I maintain are legacy projects, I no longer keep up as much with updates, nor would I choose WordPress for a new project. I participate in the community, but it has been a long time since I’ve contributed in a real way.

I was interested in involvement and then got discouraged so I stopped trying.

I had to step back as team rep, because the team has been closed…

For a smaller number it was a single decision with a date attached:

To be very specific and straightforward, I dropped all community and volunteer for WordPress after about October 2024 …

Others describe wanting to participate more and not being able to afford it:

I hardly attend or contribute anymore. I want to partcipate more in meetups, WordCamps and other events but do not have the physical and financial capacity.

I love wordpress and I feel thankful and I wish I had the time to participate and offer, but I am struggling with time and money.

Participating time by time would be great. Just for 2 Weeks or 6 Month – however with a clear endpoit. And possibilitiy to engage without longterm-bonderies.

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Finding 06

Half the people doing community work don’t consider themselves contributors

The survey asked respondents what work they do, and, separately, whether they consider themselves a contributor to the WordPress open source project (Q19). 54.3% report doing some form of contribution work, but only 42.0% self-identify as contributors. The shortfall sits almost entirely on people whose contribution is community work.

Code provides some clarity

Doing code work is the single strongest thing that makes a person claim the contributor label. Modelling contributor self-identification across everyone who does contribution work, and holding constant pay status, where they participate, and how active they are , code-based work is the dominant term and by a wide margin (p < .0001).

Mostly, but not always. 16.3% of respondents who do code work still do not call themselves contributors. Even the clearest case leaves a quarter of people unsure: among those doing code or project work without any community work, 25.7% are neutral about considering themselves “contributors”.

Among respondents who do claim the contributor label, the forms of contribution they name are led by code/programming at 55.2%, then events (54.7%) and community participation (54.7%).

44.8% of self-identified contributors report no code work at all.

97.7% of respondents who describe themselves as very active participants do contribution work but 11.4% of them do not call themselves contributors.

“I consider myself to be a contributor to the WordPress open source project”

The four middle rows are all respondents who reported doing contribution work elsewhere in the survey. Shown as a percentage of each group.

Strongly disagreeDisagreeNeutralAgreeStrongly agree

Every row except the first and last is made up of respondents who told the survey they do contribution work. Those who do community work only are split almost exactly down the middle, and 23.0% of them actively disagree that they are contributors. The difference between the contribution-type groups is highly significant (p < .0001).

The uncertainty persists in what people wrote

Respondents describe the road to contribution as genuinely unclear. The most direct version came from someone answering what matters to them in deciding how to participate:

A lot of participation seems to center around development contributions or event organizing. As an introverted generalist, it’s hard to figure out how I can meaningfully contribute directly to the open source project, so I stick mostly to participation in groups and forums alongside my full time job. Other than that, I just do what’s sponsored by my employer. I’d like to get more involved, but even make.wordpress.org makes contributing feel a little intimidating (though it’s much better guidance than there was several years ago). I might try helping out with documentation if I can find the time.

Others describe doing the work and narrating it as something other than contribution, despite testing, translation, running a meetup, speaking, and mentoring new speakers being classified as contributions by the project’s own definitions:

[…] I’m an “advanced” end-user, not a developper. Been using WordPress for myself and customers since 2008 (up to 30 sites at some point). Participated in tests, translations, reporting on various areas. […]

I make my living from WordPress, so I have tried to contribute where I can. I led a meetup for many years (and we had a contributor day many of those years). I’ve spoken at WordCamps. I was part of the Diverse Speaker Support group. It’s all kind of fallen off since WordCamp US 2024.

Others describe a feeling of confusion:

My company sent me and some other reps to WordCamp and I got to go to workshops, network, and participate in Contributor Day, but the barrier to entry in the community is seemingly pretty high. It just seems like there’s a lot you need to know already going in and as a non-coder, a lot of those rooms and spaces aren’t comfortable to be in because you don’t know what anyone’s talking about. The impostor syndrome was very real. Like since I wasn’t an active contributor…I felt I shouldn’t be there.

[…] I tried to contribute to the project as a designer but the way is set up made it impossible for me to bring any meaningful participation. How can you design iin Slack? What’s triage? Nobody explained clearly. I didn’t feel listened to. Also the pace is unbearable. I can’t design in a committee. […]

There is far too much gatekeeping involved to spend what little free time I have trying to force a way in to contribute directly via code contributions. I have gone through it in the past and realized it wasn’t worth the energy. […]

I signed up for a mentorship program for new contributors about 2 years ago but it was more confusing to me and was always async at times I couldn’t attend so I gave up…

Community is not in question

People doing only community work claim community membership at the same rate as people doing both community and code work — 92.0% in each group.

Across the whole survey, 71.5% agree they are a member of the WordPress community against 42.0% who agree they are a contributor — a 0.84-point difference on the same five-point scale (p < .0001). The gap runs one way only: just 3.0% of respondents claim contribution without claiming membership, and claiming contribution while actively rejecting community membership is close to nonexistent.

Kind of contribution work reported	Call themselves a community member	Call themselves a contributor	Gap
Community and code work	92.0%	86.6%	5.4 pts
Code / project work only	82.9%	74.3%	8.6 pts
Community work only	92.0%	48.3%	43.7 pts

Several respondents describe wanting to contribute more:

[…] There are many passionate contributors who are active in their local communities, including people outside traditional WordPress jobs, homemakers, freelancers, and independent contributors. But many cannot participate internationally because of financial limitations. Their contributions still matter and deserve more visibility and support.

[…] That would open up contribution to those of us who are not coders or designers or business marketing people but simply power users and solo entrepreneurs.

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Finding 07

Belonging matters more than money to almost everyone (including the people being paid to participate)

The survey asked how important each of fourteen factors is when respondents decide whether to participate in the WordPress open source project. Feeling welcome and included ranks second of the fourteen. Financial incentives rank twelfth. The gap holds in every segment we tested, including among respondents whose WordPress work is directly paid.

The ranking

Personal capacity, whether a person has the time and energy to participate at all, comes first at 82.8%. If a respondent is personally capable of participating, feeling welcome and included is the next most important consideration.

“When deciding to participate in the WordPress open source project, how important are each of the following to you?”

Share rating each factor important or very important. All 431 respondents.

Feeling welcomeFinancial incentivesOther factorsLighter shade = “important” rather than “very important”

Money is not merely low-ranked; it is actively dismissed. 27.4% call financial incentives unimportant to their decision — the second-highest rejection rate of the fourteen — against 5.8% who say the same of feeling welcome. On average scores the two sit 1.01 points apart on a five-point scale (4.06 against 3.05), a difference as statistically certain as anything in this survey (p < .0001).

Additional Data Points

After personal capacity and belonging come advocacy on web standards (75.6%), project leadership (67.3%) and project governance (66.4%). Financial incentives or restraints, the project roadmap, and the measurable impact of one’s own contributions all sit below that.

Being paid does not change the answer

Belonging outranks money in every pay group. Among respondents who are paid directly for their WordPress work — people whose participation is part of their job — 75.9% call feeling welcome important, compared with 44.8% for financial incentives. The gap remains highly significant within that group alone (p < .0001).

	Feeling welcome important+	Financial incentives important+	Rate belonging above money
Not paid for WordPress work	76.2%	29.4%	64.1%
Paid indirectly	77.6%	29.9%	65.7%
Paid directly	75.9%	44.8%	56.9%

How much people care about feeling welcome does not vary by pay status at all (p = .91). Being paid raises the importance of money somewhat, but not reliably enough to call significant (p = .06).

Work role produces the one significant difference in how people rate money. Employees rate financial incentives lowest of any working group at 23.3%, while business owners and freelancers rate them highest at around 41% (p = .001). People whose income already arrives regardless of what they do in WordPress do not weigh it when deciding to participate. People carrying their own commercial risk do.

The people who have experienced harm value belonging most

55.5% of respondents report personally experiencing at least one of the hostile behaviors the survey asked about: dismissiveness, hostility, harassment, contributions rejected without explanation, and others.

Those respondents rate feeling welcome higher than everyone else: 84.1% call it important, against 66.7% of respondents who report no personal experience of hostility (p < .0001). Their rating of financial incentives is statistically indistinguishable from everyone else’s (p = .23).

Inclusion is a value

How important a respondent rates feeling welcome has no relationship to how they feel about WordPress today (p = .66), and no relationship to whether their participation has risen or fallen over the past two years (p = .28). The same is true of financial incentives (p = .44 and p = .37). Respondents who are positive about the project and respondents who are negative about it rank these two factors the same way.

What people said when asked directly

Respondents were given an open field for any other factor that matters to them. Several used it to name recognition and treatment in terms the closed options did not offer:

Norms and values, acknowledgment and respect, timely communication, and proper attribution.

Recognition, safe spaces

respect, appreciation, recognition (beyond a badge)

The phrase “beyond a badge” is worth sitting with. WordPress does have a recognition system. The respondent knows it exists and is saying it does not do the thing they need.

Others described the calculation as a relationship rather than a transaction:

the balance between what I learn from and what I give to the community/project

the will to pay it forward

The feeling that I’m contributing to the common good, not something that multi million dollar companies generate their revenue from and barely give back to. And leadership that lives by example: a clear vision that contributes to making the web and the world a better place and a culture that is healthy and encouraging (not toxic and micromanaging)

And several described that relationship as having changed:

Hard to put this into words, but the feel of the community. Was always such an encouraging and hopeful community, but that tide feels like it has turned.

See above. The above are criteria for participation in any community of this kind, and WP at the moment only meets 2 not so important ones.

Where money did appear in the open field, it was alongside burnout:

Time commitment, ROI, burn out.

One respondent used the field to point at who the welcome is currently built for:

Inclusivity around timezones. This is a very US centric/Northern Hemisphere focused project and inclusion outside of that is ad hoc at best

Another, listing several unrelated reasons for not participating, included this among them:

[…] I’m not a developer or a programmer so I feel like I don’t have anything to contribute, at least nothing that would be welcome. […]

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Finding 08

The community uses AI every day. The community does not want AI in WordPress.

71.5% of respondents use AI in their work. And AI in WordPress is the most negative measure in this survey, at net −33.

The objection is specific to WordPress

The survey asked separately about AI in the tech industry (Q67), AI in web development (Q69), and AI in WordPress (Q68). On the first two respondents are divided. On the third they are not.

Respondents are markedly more comfortable with AI in their own working lives than with AI in the WordPress project.

How respondents feel about AI, in three contexts

All 431 respondents, same five-point scale, asked as three separate questions.

Very negativeNegativeNeutral / unsurePositiveVery positive

Net sentiment is −10 on AI in web development and −15 on AI in the tech industry — both close to a split. On AI in WordPress it is −33. The positive share falls by half between web development and WordPress, and the very positive share falls by two thirds.

AI negativity persists whether people use it or not

Among respondents who use AI in their work, 32.1% are negative about AI in WordPress and 23.7% are positive. Among those who do not use AI, not a single respondent is positive about it.

AI adoption also rises steeply with involvement in the project. 93.2% of the most active participants use AI in their work, and 89.5% of the moderately active — against 52.6% of observational participants and 48.6% of the inactive (p < .001). AI use is higher among paid contributors than unpaid ones (83.6% against 64.5%, p < .001) and business owners and executives are the highest of any work role (79.2%).

Among those who use AI: 78.2% use it for writing or reviewing code, 78.2% for research or learning, 63.6% for writing or editing content, and 51.0% for internal or external communications. Agentic site development, possibly the use case closest to what AI in WordPress core would enable, is used by 22.1%.

What people are objecting to is the default

Read across the free-written responses, the position is remarkably consistent: It is a question of decisions versus options.

Don’t include LLMs (“AI”) in Open Source. Make it a plugin, if you need, but never a default. Make it OptIn (=Plugin), OptOut is a dark pattern. And make it about openness and community, not about money. And fix code quality.

Really hate that AI stuff was shoehorned in as a major feature instead of a minor tick on a release list, disabled by default and opt in only. Very annoyed there’s no simple, clear opt out for AI functionality. Very tone deaf to precisely the sort of people that are the strongest advocates for WordPress.

Keep AI out of WordPress core. Plugins are sufficient for those who want to have it.

Keep AI out of the open source product. Not “included with an opt out”. Just no AI. If someone wants it they can use a plugin.

The inability to disable AI functions in WordPress.

When you include ai (i hope not but you will i suppose), make it possible to deactivate or get rid of it. Best not consider it at all.

Just in case it wasn’t clear from the above: STOP FORCING AI INTO WORDPRESS […]

Several of these are governance objections in different clothing. Shoehorned in. No simple, clear opt out. Tone deaf. One respondent made the connection explicit:

The apparent desire of WordPress management to cram AI into WP despite the numerous manifest flaws of AI, despite its environmental costs, despite the fact that AI was built on the single largest theft in human history, and in total disregard of the clearly expressed wishes of a large majority of the WP community

For a minority, it has already settled the question:

general bloat but the xlincher is cramming goddamned ai into everything. im migrating my projects off wp as a direct result of the LLM bs.

The minority in favor is real

The reasoning of the 16.9% of respondents who are positive about AI in WordPress is not the opposite of the objections:

I do not think AI is killing WordPress. Instead, AI is changing the balance of power inside the ecosystem.

For a long time, some large companies dominated certain areas of WordPress. AI is now lowering barriers, allowing smaller businesses, independent creators, and new developers to compete, innovate, and survive in ways that were previously difficult.

AI is most effectively used in the hands of experts. When WordPress democratized publishing, people were still held responsible for what they wrote. Generative AI tools might democratize code, but too often I see people not taking responsibility for it.

AI adoption and possibilities to remain autonomous in the digital world to keep and control your own data at your own server

Because WP upcoming all released in coming very good future and also 7.0 in added AI connector option. I know this is startup but always big things start from small 🤏

A significant number of respondents hold both positions at once, which the sentiment scale cannot effectively capture:

AI has impacted me both positively and negatively. I wish it weren’t there, but as it is, I use it massively and Claude has indeed made it possible for me to do things I wouldn’t have been able to do before. I cant fight it so I joined it. But i do dream of a life with NO computers in it.

AI is also the most polarized topic in the survey. 44.5% of respondents sit at one of the two extremes on AI in the tech industry and 45.0% on AI in web development, against 16.9% on WordPress sentiment.

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Finding 09

On AI and money, business owners are the only group that expects to win

Asked how AI has affected their work or income so far, respondents were net positive. Asked how it will affect them in future, they were net negative.

	Positive	No impact	Negative	Net
AI’s impact on my work or income so far	35.5%	32.7%	25.5%	+10
AI’s impact on my work or income in future	33.6%	11.8%	47.1%	−14

Respondents having positive experiences now hold steady with expectations of future impact, at 35.5% and 33.6%. But most of those who are currently not experiencing an impact are bracing for an expected negative one.

Who expects to gain

Business owners and executives, at 27.8% of the survey, are the only group with a net positive expectation.

Expected future impact of AI on work or income, by work role

Net expectation: the share expecting a positive impact minus the share expecting a negative one. Roles with fewer than 15 respondents are excluded.

Every group that works for someone else expects to lose, and the differences are significant (p = .003).

The same split shows up in how people feel about AI in web development generally: business owners and executives are net +16, the only work role above zero, while employees are net −21 and freelancers −18 (p < .001).

Respondents who are both an employee and business owner report the most positive impacts so far at net +30 . However, in the future they still expect to lose, at net −15.

Payment for WordPress participation runs the same way. Directly paid contributors are net +20 on AI’s impact so far and exactly level on the future. Unpaid contributors are net +5 and then −21.

Age does not explain any of this (p = .31). What predicts whether someone expects AI to help them or hurt them is their work role relative to the effects of the shift.

The certainty expressed in the numbers is not expressed in the comments

Given a free-write field, more than half of those who wrote something described genuine uncertainty rather than the expectation they had just selected.

I don’t know. I might become filthy rich by being hyperproductive, or I might be out of a job soon.

I don’t know. Could both be very positive or end my business.

In the short time, positively. In the long term, negatively.

This will depend entirely on which paradigms are adopted and where the incentive structure ends up

Unsure. I’ll be able to reach an average result in less time, but so will my potential customers.

Wait for the bubble to explose in 2027, and let’s talk again…

Where respondents are specific, they are specific about mechanism:

AI is probably going to replace the parts of the job I like best and that put me into higher income. It’s going to make me and many others poor or unneeded

I think AI can positively impact the quality of my work by helping me write better code, but I also fear it will hurt my income by taking away my job.

Cause of the negative impacts of AI more humans like to conect with other humans instead of faceless company also. So as a selfemployed I see tthe contra-reaction towards AI impacts as a change for my humanity arguments.

What it has already done

On impact so far, the accounts are more concrete, and several describe both directions inside a single business.

Both positive and negative. Negative: 45% drop in plugin license signups because people vibe-coded their own solutions. Positive: Using AI, I was able to turn that around quickly into an increase by making the product more interesting. Years of backlog got cleared in weeks.

This is tricky. I’d say that AI has had a significant, neutral impact on my work. Over the last year, the kinds of tasks I focus on have dramatically changed and the scale of project I take on has increased. In many ways this has been a positive change, and has allowed me to learn and grow. On the other hand, there have been a number of changes that feel like a step backwards. Probably the biggest hurdle is that I’m more exhausted by assuming the gate-keeper role for an increasing volume of sloppy, expensive, and sometimes, just broken implementations. This includes review of my own AI coding sessions as well as those from contributors.

I think AI has played a role in how the job market is now. I recently lost my job due to issues related to our political situstion . Specifically, the tarriffs adversely affected my former employer and layoffs happen. Some months prior, I heard the higher ups discussing AI, so its possible they saw AI as a solution for having to lay off the human workers.

AI has not impacted my current job, but I turned down a job offer from a different company because the company were heavy AI users.

Positive effect on work or income: Made cool products / plugins when in a time crunch Negative Effect: Less sure of how plugins work since I did not fully make it ….

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Finding 10

A third of respondents who have attended a WordPress event no longer do (and they have pulled back from everything else too)

63.8% of respondents have attended an official WordPress event at some point. Of those, 34.2% no longer attend. And those respondents are not simply absent from events: across nearly every measure they have decreased their engagement, and they feel more negatively about WordPress than anyone else, including people who have never attended an event and have no interest in doing so.

Where respondents stand with events

Of respondents overall, 27.8% have never attended and are not interested, 6.5% have never attended but would like to, and 1.9% described their situation in free text rather than choosing an option.

Two thirds of the people who have ever attended a WordPress event still go. One third (34.2%) have stopped attending. The rest of this finding is about that third, because of what else they have stopped doing.

Among respondents who have ever attended	Share of ever-attenders
Still attend, multiple times per year	33.1%
Still attend, annually or occasionally	32.7%
Used to attend, no longer do	34.2%

We did not ask whether people who currently attend occasionally if they used to attend more often. That would have told us whether the contraction runs deeper than the group who stopped entirely, and it is a question we will add in 2027.

The withdrawal is from the community, not from the software

Comparing respondents who stopped attending against those who still attend produces a clear pattern:

Respondents who still attend WordPress events, against those who used to and no longer do

Share of each group. Rows marked n.s. show no statistically significant difference.

Still attend eventsStopped attending

Respondents who stopped attending events are just as likely as current attendees to still use WordPress, still follow project news and still earn a living from it. They are markedly less likely to do any contribution work, half as likely to call themselves contributors, and a fifth as likely to describe themselves as active participants.

Those who have left the events have still not left the WordPress ecosystem entirely. 94.7% still use the software and 70.2% still generate income from it, neither meaningfully different from current attendees. 86.2% still follow project updates and discussion.

What changed is social and organizational: 52.1% do contribution work compared with 84.5% of current attendees, 33.0% participate in Make WordPress versus 64.6%, and 11.7% describe themselves as very or moderately active compared with 53.6%. All of these differences are significant at p < .0001.

However, the folks who have left official WordPress events, are not filling the void with other events. Only 10.6% attend WordPress-adjacent independent events, compared with 46.4% of people who attend both official and independent events. Attendance at non-WordPress tech conferences is also down, though less sharply: 38.3% against 51.4%.

People who stopped going feel worse than people who never went

Present sentiment among respondents who stopped attending is 2.43 out of 5, compared with 3.22 for current attendees. Future sentiment is 2.34 compared with 3.24. Both differences are among the largest in the survey (p < .0001).

The people who have never attended a WordPress event and are not interested in doing so rate 2.63 on present sentiment and 2.41 on the future. Both measures are above the people who used to attend but stopped (2.43 and 2.34, respectively).

	Present sentiment	Future sentiment	Soured over 24 months	Participation decreased
Still attend	3.22	3.24	89.9%	34.8%
Stopped attending	2.43	2.34	98.8%	64.9%
Never attended, not interested	2.63	2.41	100.0%	28.3%

When asked whether attending in-person WordPress events is important to them, respondents who stopped attending split almost evenly three ways: 31.9% agree, 31.9% are neutral, 36.2% disagree. That distribution contrasts with people who never attended and are not interested, where 0.8% agree attending in-person WordPress events is important and 89.2% disagree.

The survey also asked respondents who do not currently identify as community members whether they ever did (Q24). Applying that filter to the people who stopped attending events produces two clearly different populations, with every difference statistically significant.

Among respondents who stopped attending events	Still consider themselves community members	Once did, no longer do
Share of everyone who stopped attending	68.1%	27.7%
Still use the WordPress software	98.4%	84.6%
Still follow project updates	92.2%	73.1%
Do any contribution work	62.5%	30.8%
Still say events are important to them	42.2%	11.5%
Present sentiment (1–5)	2.55	2.08
Ten or more years in the community	85.9%	50.0%

(The remaining 4.3% neither identify as members now nor say they ever did.)

Two thirds of the people who stopped attending WordPress events have not left the community. They still use the software at essentially the same rate as active attendees, still follow the project, still contribute, and more than four in ten still say events matter to them.

Cost is the one thing both groups have in common

Whether respondents have left the community or stayed, they agree on what is important to them when deciding whether or not attend events.

76.9% of the group that left the community rate cost of attendance important, compared to 79.7% of the group that stayed (no meaningful difference (p = .51)). The same is true of ticket cost and of wanting a local location.

Across all 431 respondents, cost of attendance — travel, accommodation, time away — is the single most important factor in deciding whether to attend an in-person event, at 72.4%. It outranks session topics, location, networking and community engagement. Ticket pricing is separate, and sits well below the broader cost of attendance at 54.5%.

Event non-attendance is concentrated in the United States

Among respondents who have ever attended a WordPress event, 47.2% of those in the United States have stopped, compared to 25.7% of those outside it (p < .001). Frequent attendance runs at 14.4% of US respondents versus 26.4% elsewhere.

Modelling who stopped attending among everyone who ever attended, and holding constant gender, pay status, tenure and current sentiment toward the project, being in the United States remains the strongest of those predictors (p < .001). Being a woman is the next strongest (p < .01). Neither pay status nor tenure predicts it at all.

A local location was cited by a majority respondents as important (65.9%), U.S. and non-U.S. respondents rate a local location as equally important, but we did not ask if respondents who have stopped attending if they would attend a hypothetical local event.

What respondents say happened

The survey did not ask why people stopped attending, but respondents provided answers in their free-written responses, and the most frequent account is less that they made a singular decision to stop going and more that the thing they were attending stopped existing.

Attended event in the past, used to regularly attend MeetUps in my city – they ended

Expensive and far away. I used to go to a lot of local WordCamps, but there are so few in the US now.

I used to attend the local WordCamp annually, but it never came back post-covid

I go to WordCamp US when I can. I do not live in an area that has local meetups or is close to any WordPress-related events.

I used to attend WordCamps. I no longer feel compelled to do so. There are no more local WordCamps and there is no compensation for travel and lodging for contributors or volunteers. It’s expensive to travel, and the ROI is no longer there.

I never had the budget to travel widely to WP events, or I would have gone to more of them. I went to WordCamp SF from 2009 until it was discontinued. […] I went to WordCamp US 2024 in Portland, which was great until it wasn’t. I just applied to speak at WCSCV, and they had to cancel it. I haven’t had the heart (or the bandwidth) to work at reviving my own meetup, never mind working toward holding a WordCamp.

I used to go to several wordcamps per year, but now I can’t afford it, so I typically just do US

I attended the first WordCamp Canada. I haven’t been able to get budget to go to subsequent events.

A second set of accounts is about the conflict rather than the logistics, and they are entirely explicit:

I will not attend events where AI is being promoted or where Matt Mullenweg is speaking or attending.

If Automattic is involved, I don’t want to buy a ticket.

I was an organizer for several WordCamp events, but future organizers have been somewhat unsubtle about how my participation no longer is welcome.

I used to run a Meetup, but that stopped when the WordPress / WP Engine lawsuit started as everyone wasn’t sure what was going to happen. The whole “Pineapple on pizza” thing sums it up. Happy to start again, but want to know things are stable.

General vibes. How “in-crowd” they seem to be — I got disillusioned with wordcamps when they seemed to have a widening chasm between the Automatticians/in-crowd folks and beginners/newbies/everyone else. […] I am most attracted to opportunities that feel generous & welcoming while also providing significant value in the presentation & exhibitor content.

And a third set is about organizer burnout, which provides an explanation for the lack of local events to attend:

I used to attend more than 8 wordcamps a year and organized a bunch. It became too burdensome to run my local meetup and after doing one national wordcamp I gave up because of the stress it caused. Now, I no longer work in WP so it makes no sense for me to attend them.

I attended the Chicago and US camps for several years. I am still active with my local meetup. Would like to get more events in the Midwest but felt discouraged/unsupported in this effort.

Reasons we did not think to ask about

The survey offered thirteen closed factors for deciding whether to attend an event. Unprompted, respondents used the open field to raise several more factors. Each was named by a small number of people, and we make no claim about their relative weight:

• Health and safety measures. Masking policies, ventilation and air filtration, and the risk of illness.
• Employer budget and permission. Several respondents described attendance as their employer’s decision rather than their own.
• Whether AI is being promoted at the event.
• Who will be present. Named individuals and Automattic’s involvement.
• Whether remote or hybrid attendance is offered.
• Accessibility. Both physical access to venues and the accessibility of event websites. One respondent told us plainly that leaving it off the list was itself a problem.
• Safety of the destination country for LGBTQ+ attendees and other groups.
• Codes of conduct and explicit statements of inclusivity.
• Speaker compensation and travel reimbursement.
• Caring responsibilities and schedule, including school holidays and the need to take breaks during a day.

It’s telling that you, the folks who created this survey, didn’t think about accessibility as a criteria affecting attendance or involvement here. It’s very important to me in two ways: – physical accessibility: due to physical disabilities and other issues, I can’t travel and I need to be able to participate virtually or in online conferences. WP community prefers to stay exclusive and shut folks out by focusing on in-person events. – then there’s the lack of accesibility of the websites involved.

Logistics: I’m totally blind and would like to count on community, for help on attending events. Reach places, move into venues, etc.

They are right, and the omission is recorded in our limitations. All of the factors above with be incorporated into the 2027 survey.

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Finding 11

90% of respondents agree on the importance of security, web standards, open source values, and the WordPress software itself

The survey asked respondents to rate the importance of thirteen aspects of the WordPress open source project. Four of them are rated important or very important by more than 90% of all respondents:

• Security in WordPress (95.1%)
• The WordPress open source software itself (94.0%)
• Web standards and compliance (93.7%)
• Open source values (90.7%)

No other aspects of the project comes close to these rankings: the fifth-ranked aspect sits more than ten points below the fourth. In a survey where almost nothing is agreed on, these four are. Also, the agreement survives every division we tested.

The four agreements

“How important are each of the following aspects of the WordPress open source project to you?”

Share rating each aspect important or very important. All 431 respondents.

The four above 90%Everything elseLighter shade = “important” rather than “very important”

Security is rated very important by 75.6% of respondents on its own, the highest single figure in the survey. Below the top four the ranking falls away sharply, and the bottom four aspects are each called unimportant by roughly a quarter of respondents or more.

The four are not marginally ahead. On each of them fewer than 3% of respondents say the aspect is unimportant, and between 61.9% and 75.6% say it is very important. 83.1% of all respondents rate all four important, and 94.4% rate at least three of the four.

Conspicuously, the project’s commercial layer ranked near the bottom: Business issues sit at 41.5% and enterprise and scale issues at 40.1%.

The agreements survive disagreement

We took the groups most alienated from the project elsewhere in this report and looked at their responses:

	Security	The software	Web standards	Open source values
All respondents	95.1%	94.0%	93.7%	90.7%
Negative about WordPress now	92.7%	89.6%	92.7%	92.1%
Very negative about WordPress now	94.3%	90.6%	92.5%	96.2%
Negative about the future	92.3%	89.9%	92.9%	90.5%
Feel worse than 24 months ago	94.7%	93.1%	93.4%	89.6%
Stopped attending events	90.4%	90.4%	91.5%	88.3%
Former community members	89.3%	85.7%	87.5%	87.5%
Do not call themselves contributors	93.6%	90.8%	94.0%	88.8%
Never paid for participation	96.4%	94.4%	94.4%	90.3%

The largest drop anywhere in the table is eight points, among former community members — people who told the survey they no longer consider themselves part of this at all, and who still rate all four above 85%.

We tested the four agreements across thirty-two segments — pay status, gender, location, tenure, work role, participation level, AI use, contributor identity and current sentiment. Across all of them the lowest any of the four falls is 74.3%, from respondents who say they do not participate in the project at all.

What people add when asked

Given an open field for other aspects that matter to them, respondents mostly did not name new things. They restated these four with more force.

A really want to see culture of security from top to bottom, prioritizing it over features. WordPress is load-bearing software; act like it.

Well, the security of the project directly affects whether people use it as their web platform.

Beyond plugin development, the aspects of the WordPress open-source project that matter most to me are security, extensibility, and long-term sustainability. As someone who builds software for organizations that depend on WordPress in production environments, I believe security should be a first-class concern throughout the ecosystem, from authentication and access control to plugin development practices and responsible vulnerability management.

Accessibility came up repeatedly and unprompted, as a component of the standards item rather than a separate concern:

Accessibility by design, both in front-end (themes) and in backend (admin panel, and overall plugins). Accessibility should be a mandatory standard to submit new plugins.

Documentation, learning as a fundamental pillar that encourages creativity and engagement, accessibility and access.

And open source values were, for several respondents, the reason they are still here at all:

The four freedoms which define free software includes the freedom to study the source code.

Additional Data Points

• Security is the single strongest item in the survey. 75.6% call it very important — a higher share than any other aspect, factor or issue the survey measured on a five-point scale.
• The community itself ranks fifth, at 80.3%. That is a strong figure in absolute terms and notable in context: it is the next most agreed upon aspect, after the four main agreements.
• “Contributing to WordPress” ranks tenth of thirteen at 45.7%, with 18.8% calling it unimportant. Read alongside Finding 06, the low ranking is at least partly a question about the word rather than about the activity.

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Section 2: The Respondents

Who answered the survey, from their own self-identification. These are the questions from the opening section of the instrument, reported as plain distributions.

Age

Gender

One respondent selected “Other”.

Where respondents work from

43 countries in total.

Work situation

Multiple selections allowed, so shares total more than 100%.

Company size

Asked of the 220 respondents who described themselves as employees. Shares are of that group.

Asked of the 134 respondents who described themselves as business owners. Shares are of that group.

WordPress activities respondents engage in

Multiple selections allowed.

Where respondents participate in the project

Multiple selections allowed.

Type of work respondents do with WordPress

Multiple selections allowed.

“I consider myself to be a member of the WordPress community”

“I consider myself to be a contributor to the WordPress open source project”

Respondents who do not currently identify as community members

Asked of the 123 respondents who did not agree they are currently members. Shares are of that group.

Time in the WordPress community

Answered by 364 respondents. Current members were asked how long they have been part of the community; former members how long they were. Respondents who have never considered themselves members were not asked.

Self-described level of participation

Change in participation over the past 24 months

Payment for WordPress participation

Whether the project affects respondents’ income

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Section 2: The Numbers

Headline distributions with no interpretation attached. Everything here recomputes from the published aggregates. Shares are of all 431 respondents unless a base is stated.

Sentiment toward the WordPress project right now

Sentiment toward the future of the WordPress project

Sentiment toward open source software in general

Change in feeling toward WordPress over the past 24 months

The second and third rows are shares of the respondents whose feelings changed.

Importance of aspects of the WordPress project

Share rating each item important or very important, of 13 offered.

	important+	very important	unimportant
Security in WordPress	95.1%	75.6%	1.4%
WordPress open source software	94.0%	65.4%	1.4%
Web standards and compliance	93.7%	65.9%	1.6%
Open source values	90.7%	61.9%	2.6%
The WordPress community	80.3%	41.8%	7.0%
WordPress governance	76.6%	50.8%	5.8%
WordPress leadership	73.8%	43.4%	8.1%
Collaboration with the greater open source ecosystem	67.7%	26.0%	8.8%
WordPress events and meetups	50.1%	19.5%	26.7%
Contributing to WordPress	45.7%	13.9%	18.8%
Business issues (mergers & acquisitions, product ecosystem, private equity investment, etc.)	41.5%	12.5%	25.5%
Enterprise/scale issues	40.1%	11.1%	24.8%
AI in WordPress	29.0%	12.8%	52.7%

What matters when deciding whether to participate

Share rating each item important or very important, of 14 offered.

	important+	very important	unimportant
Personal capacity	82.8%	44.5%	3.7%
Feeling welcome/included	76.3%	39.2%	5.8%
Advocacy on behalf of web standards (accessibility, privacy, etc.)	75.6%	33.6%	7.7%
Project leadership	67.3%	32.7%	12.5%
Project governance/policies	66.4%	32.7%	10.4%
Understanding how to participate	59.6%	16.2%	10.7%
Impact of my participation on my professional or personal life	58.5%	15.3%	9.5%
Working asynchronously	55.5%	24.1%	11.6%
Participation in the WordPress community	53.4%	15.3%	10.0%
Project roadmap	51.7%	14.2%	17.2%
Impact of my contributions to the project	47.8%	12.8%	14.4%
Financial incentives/restraints	33.6%	11.8%	27.4%
Mentorship or guidance	33.4%	7.4%	23.9%
Participating in a language other than English	19.7%	6.3%	45.2%

What matters when deciding whether to attend an event

Share rating each item important or very important, of 13 offered.

	important+	very important	unimportant
Cost of attendance (travel, housing, etc.)	72.4%	34.3%	11.4%
Topics of sessions / panels	67.3%	18.6%	11.1%
A location local to you	65.9%	27.8%	13.9%
Community development/engagement	61.5%	18.3%	11.8%
Networking opportunities	60.6%	25.1%	14.2%
Cost of ticket	54.5%	17.6%	19.5%
A regional/destination location	54.3%	13.9%	16.7%
Hard skill development (technical instruction, workshops, etc.)	52.9%	11.8%	18.1%
Particular speakers / keynotes	38.7%	7.7%	21.8%
Soft skill development (business development, personal development, etc.)	38.5%	6.7%	24.8%
Meeting professional development requirements	28.8%	7.0%	32.0%
Events with smaller attendance	25.1%	3.9%	24.8%
Events with larger attendance	16.9%	2.8%	31.6%

Problems in the community

Share reporting each, experienced personally or witnessed happening to someone else.

	experienced or witnessed	experienced personally
Problems with project leadership or governance	73.3%	37.4%
Conflict or ongoing interpersonal tension between community members	68.2%	17.4%
Dismissive or condescending responses to contributions or questions	67.3%	31.8%
Hostility or rudeness	62.4%	27.4%
Harassment or targeted negative behavior	51.5%	13.9%
Name-calling or personal attacks	50.6%	13.5%
Language or content that made me or others feel unwelcome or excluded	49.4%	22.7%

84.9% of respondents report at least one of these. 55.5% report experiencing at least one personally.

AI use at work

71.5% of respondents use AI in their work. Shares above are of all 431 respondents, not of AI users. Duplicate and mislabelled export columns are excluded — see LIMITATIONS §5b.

Sentiment toward AI in WordPress

Relationship to official WordPress events

41.8% of respondents attended a non-WordPress tech or open source conference in the past 24 months.

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The survey in numbers

Headline figures with no interpretation attached. Everything here recomputes from the published aggregates. Percentages are of all 431 respondents unless a base is stated.

Sentiment

Positive about WordPress right now	32.7%
Negative about WordPress right now	38.1%
Positive about WordPress’s future	24.4%
Negative about WordPress’s future	39.0%
Neutral or unsure about the future	36.7%
Say their feelings about WordPress changed over 24 months	77.3%
— of those, changed for the worse	95.5%
Positive about open source generally	81.7%
Negative about open source generally	3.9%

What matters most about the WordPress project

Share rating each aspect important or very important, of thirteen offered.

Top three
Security in WordPress	95.1%
The WordPress open source software	94.0%
Web standards and compliance	93.7%

Bottom three	important	unimportant
Business issues (M&A, product ecosystem, private equity)	41.5%	25.5%
Enterprise and scale issues	40.1%	24.8%
AI in WordPress	29.0%	52.7%

AI in WordPress is the only aspect of the project that more respondents call unimportant than important. See LIMITATIONS §3 before quoting this item on its own.

What matters most when deciding whether to participate

Of fourteen factors offered.

Top three
Personal capacity	82.8%
Feeling welcome and included	76.3%
Advocacy on web standards (accessibility, privacy, etc.)	75.6%

Bottom three	important	unimportant
Financial incentives and restraints	33.6%	27.4%
Mentorship or guidance	33.4%	23.9%
Participating in a language other than English	19.7%	45.2%

What matters most when deciding whether to attend an event

Of thirteen factors offered.

Top three
Cost of attendance (travel, housing, time away)	72.4%
Topics of sessions and panels	67.3%
A location local to you	65.9%

Bottom three	important	unimportant
Meeting professional development requirements	28.8%	32.0%
Events with smaller attendance	25.1%	24.8%
Events with larger attendance	16.9%	31.6%

Cost of the ticket ranks sixth at 54.5%, eighteen points below cost of attendance.

Problems in the community

Share reporting each, either experienced personally or witnessed happening to someone else.

	experienced or witnessed	experienced personally
Problems with project leadership or governance	73.3%	37.4%
Conflict or ongoing interpersonal tension	68.2%	17.4%
Dismissive or condescending responses	67.3%	31.8%
Hostility or rudeness	62.4%	27.4%
Harassment or targeted negative behaviour	51.5%	13.9%
Name-calling or personal attacks	50.6%	13.5%
Language or content that made someone feel unwelcome	49.4%	22.7%

84.9% of respondents report at least one of these. 55.5% report experiencing at least one personally.

How people engage with WordPress

Use the WordPress software	93.0%
Use WordPress personally or for their own organisation	72.9%
Follow project updates and discussion	79.1%
Generate income using WordPress	62.4%
Participate in WordPress-related events	52.4%
Work for a company in the WordPress ecosystem	39.7%
Contribute to community development of the project	31.3%
Contribute to software development of the project	27.8%
Do not currently participate in WordPress activities	5.3%

Where people participate

Official WordPress events	50.6%
WordPress.org	47.8%
WordPress communities on social media	39.2%
Make WordPress	36.4%
Membership-based communities	30.4%
Product-related communities	22.3%
WordPress-adjacent events	20.0%
Do not participate in the open source project at all	21.1%

Identity and pay

Consider themselves a member of the WordPress community	71.5%
Consider themselves a contributor to the open source project	42.0%
Have never been paid for any WordPress participation	57.5%
Paid directly — participation is part of their job	26.9%
Paid indirectly — participate for work but not required to	15.5%

AI

Currently use AI in their work	71.5%
— for writing or reviewing code	55.9%
— for research or learning	55.9%
— for writing or editing content	45.5%
— for internal or external communications	36.4%
— for design or image generation	30.4%
Negative about AI in WordPress	49.9%
Positive about AI in WordPress	16.9%
Very negative about AI in WordPress	36.4%

AI use-case shares are of all 431 respondents, not of the 71.5% who use AI.

Events

Have ever attended an official WordPress event	63.8%
— of those, no longer attend	34.2%
Attend official events multiple times per year	21.1%
Never attended and not interested	27.8%
Attended a non-WordPress tech conference in the past 24 months	41.8%

Participation over the past 24 months