WordPress 7.0 Drops PHP 7.2 and 7.3: PHP 7.4 Is the New Minimum

WordPress 7.0 "Armstrong" was released on 20 May 2026, and it quietly changed something that matters a lot for older hosting: the minimum supported PHP version went up from 7.2.24 to 7.4. PHP 7.2 and 7.3 are no longer supported. According to the WordPress Hosting Team, this is the first increase in the minimum PHP requirement since WordPress 6.6.

What the requirements look like now

• Absolute minimum: PHP 7.4+, MySQL 5.5.5+ or MariaDB 5.5.5+
• Recommended minimum (official requirements page): PHP 8.3 or newer, MariaDB 10.11+ or MySQL 8.0+, and HTTPS
• Hosting Team recommendation for new installs: PHP 8.4 or 8.5, MySQL 8.4, MariaDB 10.11 / 11.4 / 11.8

WordPress documents 7.0 as fully compatible with PHP 7.4 through 8.5, but PHP 7.4, 8.0 and 8.1 are listed as end-of-life versions supported for backward compatibility only. A May 2026 core post also retired the "beta" label for PHP support: WordPress 6.9 and 7.0 are now documented as fully supporting PHP 8.5.

Upstream PHP status

When WordPress 7.0 shipped, only four PHP branches were still receiving security fixes:

Note that PHP 8.2 reaches end of life on 31 December 2026, so sites that recently moved to 8.2 should already plan their next step.

What site owners should do

If a WordPress site is still on PHP 7.2 or 7.3, it can't be upgraded to 7.0 until the server moves to at least PHP 7.4. In practice, jumping straight to PHP 8.3 or later is the better choice, because 7.4 itself has been end-of-life since 2022. Before switching, test themes and plugins on a staging copy: old plugins are the most common source of fatal errors after a PHP upgrade.

Sources: WordPress 7.0 Server Compatibility, PHP support clarification, spring 2026, WordPress requirements.

Stuck on an old PHP version because a legacy theme or plugin breaks? RescuePHP helps teams upgrade aging WordPress and custom PHP sites safely, and can apply security patches to environments that can't be upgraded right away.