</svg>
</button></figure>
Gutenberg 22.5 brings custom CSS support to individual block instances. Under the Advanced → Additional CSS block sidebar control, you can add CSS specific to that single instance of a block. A .has-custom-css CSS class is also added dynamically in both the editor and on the front end when a block has CSS.
This feature is one of those double-edged swords, being both useful for one-off changes and also creating later management headaches. There’s an open ticket discussing an indicator when a block has custom CSS attached to it. In most cases, you’ll likely want to rely on keeping your styles at the global level or use block style variations to keep your code base cleaner.
WordPress Studio CLI updates
Version 1.7.0 of WordPress Studio saw substantial updates to its command line tools. You can now control nearly every feature—other than Sync—directly from the command lines. This means that it will work well with AI-assisted development tools, such as Claude Code and Cursor.
AI and agent features
The AI Experiments plugin has been updated to add several improvements:
UI Primitives and Components
The WordPress UI package received a significant update with the addition of several components and primitives designed to help developers build more consistent and accessible interfaces:
Anchor support for dynamic blocks
Anchor (id attribute) support now works for dynamic blocks. The reference is always saved in the block comment delimiter, which allows it to be rendered on the front end dynamically. The change also updates most dynamic Core blocks to include support.
Themes
Text supports improved for multiple blocks
Heading, Verse, and several comment-related blocks (Author Name, Content, Date, Edit Link, Reply Link, and Title) now fully support the textAlign feature. During the 7.0 cycle, contributors standardized text alignment and have been updating blocks across the board. Follow the migration ticket to follow along.
Text indent support was added in an initial pull request to get the long-requested indentation feature added to the Block Editor. The current style is limited to a specific type of indentation (first paragraph not indented but subsequent ones are). The initial implementation lacked enough cross-language support, and more options for handling indentation will land in Gutenberg 22.6.
The Paragraph block also gained textColumns support, which allows you to turn a single paragraph into multiple columns of text.
AI-generated images allowed in theme directory
A discussion kicked off last year over whether AI-generated images could be bundled with themes in the directory. Eventually, WordPress Executive Director Mary Hubbard advised to move forward with their allowance:
AI-generated images can be used if they are explicitly disclosed and licensed in a GPL-compatible way. If the author declares this, I don’t see an issue in moving it forward.
The Themes Team solidified that decision during its January 27, 2026 team meeting.
Default link styles removed
Previously, the default WordPress theme.json file added an underline as the default text-decoration on link elements. Since this is already the browser default, it was redundant. This has now been removed and should not impact most themes, but it’s worth checking just to be sure.
Breadcrumbs block updates
The Breadcrumbs block is still receiving some fine-tuning as it gears up for the WordPress 7.0 release. The latest changes include:
Gutenberg 22.4 introduced a new HtmlRenderer component, which renders HTML content as React elements with optional wrapper props. For theme authors, this means that several blocks will no longer have an extra wrapping <div> in the editor, allowing for consistent styling with the front end.
Blocks which have now been fixed are:
Gallery caption background blur
The caption background blur for Gallery Image captions has been changed from a max height of 40% to 3em. This could impact custom styles, so be sure to check its output with your theme.
The original proposal was to move the background to the <figcaption> element itself, but that proved problematic with some image dimensions.
Pullquote block reinstated
The Pullquote block was deprecated in Gutenberg 22.2 in favor of pushing users toward the Quote block. However, after a lengthy discussion with lots of community feedback, contributors realized these two blocks are semantically different and are for entirely different use cases. The block has been reinstated with no plans for deprecation as of now.
There is still an ongoing discussion to address the Quote and Pullquote block’s markup and ensure they are semantically valid HTML and accessible.
Aspect ratios for Image blocks at all alignments
In WordPress 6.9 and earlier, you were unable to define an aspect ratio for an Image block when it was set to wide or full alignment. This meant registering custom image sizes (technically, resolutions) and using them as faux aspect ratios. In WordPress 7.0, you’ll be able to correctly set wide and full-width images to any registered aspect ratio.
Tabs block restructured
The Tabs block has undergone a significant refactoring based on feedback from Core contributors. The block now has multiple inner blocks, giving you much more control over styling its output.
The outer Tabs block now has a nested structure:
The change also removes the Button and Link styles present in earlier versions. This will make it easier for you if you were previously disabling those styles or restyling them to match your design.
Navigation and overlays
The Navigation Overlay feature continues to improve. The last two Gutenberg releases added several important updates and fixes:
Other notable block changes
- You can now exclude terms (e.g., categories, tags) via the Query Loop block controls.
- On the front-end only, the Paragraph block now has a
.wp-block-paragraph class. This change doesn’t affect global styles, which still uses the p selector.
- The Verse block utilizes
border-box for its box-sizing, which should make it easier to style without additional custom CSS.
Playground
Playground removed support for PHP 7.2 and 7.3 and bundled several updates for iOS and Safari in the past month. The docs were also translated to Bengali.
wp-env now supports the Playground runtime. By default, it requires Docker to be installed on your machine, which can be an additional hurdle to getting started with WordPress development. Now, with one command, you can run local development with Playground instead:
npx @wordpress/env start --runtime=playground
If you haven’t read it already, be sure to check out Streamlining block theme development with WordPress Playground and Github right here on the Developer Blog.
Notable user-facing changes
A couple of items that are more geared toward the user experience are worth looking at as an extender.
View transitions will be integrated into the WordPress admin in 7.0, enabling smooth transitions between screens. There is an open ticket to bring this to the front end, but until it is included, you can use the View Transitions plugin.
Each heading level (H1-H6) is now registered as a block variation on the Heading block. These do not appear in the inserter, but the change does add icons to the block’s sidebar for transforming it between variations.
Resources
Developer Blog
Three new blog posts landed on the Developer Blog in the past month. If you haven’t read them already, now’s the time:
Props to @ndiego, @fellyph, @welcher, and @bph for contributing to and/or reviewing this article.
