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It’s the final countdown: the third (and last) scheduled release candidate (RC3) for WordPress 6.2 is ready!

The WordPress 6.2 release is scheduled for March 28, 2023—just one week away! Now is your last opportunity to test it before the general release. 

Just tuning in now? Catch up on the featured highlights, and dig into more 6.2 details in the WordPress 6.2 RC1 release announcement.

Thanks to all the Beta and RC testers who have assisted in this release. Since RC2 was released on March 14, there have been about 21 issues resolved in Trac and GitHub.

Your feedback and help in filing bug reports keep the WordPress experience stable, smooth, and delightful. It’s critical work and a great way to contribute to the project. 

How to install RC3 for testing

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC3 on a test server and site. 

You can test WordPress 6.2 RC3 in three ways:

Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).

Option 2: Direct download the RC3 version (zip).

Option 3: Use the following WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=6.2-RC3

A shout out to plugin and theme developers

Your products are the reason WordPress does so many things for more people across the world. As you test your latest versions against RC3, make sure you update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.2. If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the support forums.

Check out the WordPress 6.2 Field Guide for more details about the major changes in this release.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. 

Keep WordPress bug-free—help with testing

Without your testing support, hitting important product milestones would be a much bigger challenge. It’s also a meaningful way to contribute to the project. If you’re new to testing, or it’s been a while, this detailed guide can help you get started. 

If you think you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Release the haiku

Wow, we’re oh so close
Test, test. Get it out the door.
Please no RC 4.

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @laurlittle @marybaum @audrasjb @cbringmann @webcommsat