WooCommerce has revived Purple, the block-based theme it shelved 14 months ago, and released it for public beta testing. It’s already the default theme for new stores on WordPress.com’s Commerce plan.
What happened
WooCommerce withdrew Purple from the WordPress.org theme directory in July 2025, saying it overlapped with other block themes in development and that it would instead focus on adding commerce features directly to core WooCommerce blocks. WooCommerce Developer Advocate Brian Coords announced its return this week, framing the past year of work on WooCommerce’s block library and editor as the reason Purple is now worth shipping.
Purple ships with templates for most block-enabled WooCommerce pages, 10 color palettes, 10 font pairings, and a pattern library covering product grids, filters, collections, and product detail pages. Features that used to require paid extensions on Storefront, like product hero designs, custom homepages, product galleries, a mini-cart, and advanced headers and footers, are now built into the theme through WooCommerce’s block library.
The theme is available now on GitHub and through a preview site, but it isn’t in the WordPress.org theme directory or the WooCommerce Marketplace yet. Coords said that comes after this round of testing.
What to do
- If you’re planning a new WooCommerce store, don’t switch a live site to Purple yet. Test it on a staging or local site first.
- If you try it, check the responsive controls across desktop, tablet, and mobile, and report issues in the Woo Themes GitHub repository with version numbers and steps to reproduce.
- If you’re happy with your current theme, there’s no need to act. Purple isn’t replacing anything by default, and a full release is still ahead.
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