On March 10, 2026, WordPress 6.9.3 was released to the public as a fast follow to the 6.9.2 security release.
Installation/Update Information
To get this version, update automatically from the Dashboard > Updates menu in your site’s admin area or visit https://wordpress.org/download/release-archive/.
For step-by-step instructions on installing and updating WordPress:
If you are new to WordPress, we recommend that you begin with the following:
- New To WordPress – Where to Start
- First Steps With WordPress or Upgrading WordPress Extended
- WordPress Lessons
Summary
This release features a bugfix for some themes that use an unusual “stringable object” mechanism when loading template file paths that broke in the 6.9.2 security release. Although this is is not an officially supported approach to loading template files in WordPress (the template_include filter only accepts a string), it nevertheless caused some sites to break so the team have decided to address this in a fast follow 6.9.3 release. Users using affected themes should update to 6.9.3 to restore the front end of their site to an operational state.
As a reminder, the earlier 6.9.2 version was a security release, and only the most recent version of WordPress is actively supported.
Many thanks to those who reported the issue, assisted in narrowing down the problem, and helped with the fix, in particular Jos Klever who assisted throughout the process.
Change log
List of files revised
/wp-includes/class-wp-block-patterns-registry.php
/wp-includes/template-loader.php
List of packages revised
No package was revised.