WordPress 7.1 has shipped its third beta, and the headline change is something getting pulled, not added. Beta 1 arrived on July 15 with the feature list locked in. Beta 3 breaks that lock to drop one feature after testing turned up security concerns.
What got removed, and why
Unicode email address support, which would have let people register and log in with non-ASCII addresses, has been pulled from 7.1. The feature had been in development for 11 years and was merged into WordPress core in June, but testing surfaced real problems: password resets failing for some Unicode addresses, comment validation rejecting valid ones, and PHP warnings from duplicate email checks.
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg cited the security implications of the change as the reason to keep it out of core, pointing to “the vast surface area Unicode introduces.” Development will continue in a separate community plugin instead of core, so the feature isn’t dead, it just won’t ship as part of WordPress itself for now.
What else changed
Beta 3 fixes more than 71 issues found since Beta 1, including several media upload problems that would have affected real sites:
- Long animated GIF uploads no longer hang.
- Photos with EXIF rotation data now process with the correct orientation.
- Uploading a single HEIC photo in Safari no longer creates duplicate entries in your media library.
The block editor’s “Apply globally” option also changed. Previously, pushing a style change to every block of that type was all-or-nothing. Now it opens a review step where you choose which changed styles go global and which stay as local overrides.
What you need to do
Nothing yet. This is still a beta, so don’t install it on a live site. The first release candidate is expected August 5, with the final release scheduled for August 19, 2026. If you want to test ahead of time, use a staging site or a disposable Playground instance, not a production install. Read the full Beta 3 announcement for the complete list of fixes.
End of article