State of the [WordPress] Community 2026 
thewpocc.org
The results are out from the independent survey on the WordPress community, conducted by the WP Open Community collective.
It represents a scathing critique of WordPress’s direction and, especially, of Matt Mullenweg’s leadership. For example, 73.8% said they feel more negative about the project than 24 months ago. When asked about open source software in general, the negative outlook dropped to 23.9%. The biggest source of problems, with 73.3% saying they had experienced or witnessed incidents, relates to governance and leadership.
The use of generative AI in WordPress displeases most respondents, even among those who use AI at work.
In his closing remarks at WordCamp US on Wednesday (19th), Mullenweg brought up this survey finding and suggested that “We might just need to rebrand some of what we’re doing [with AI]” such as “automation,” according to the account from the blog The Repository. It strikes me that this reaction adds to the evidence of a leadership that doesn’t listen to the community.