Six hours of mediation in July produced nothing — WP Engine and Automattic are headed to trial in February 2027, and the outcome will touch every enterprise WordPress shop still on the fence.
When a client asks us whether they should still be building on WordPress, the honest answer has always been: it depends on what the courts decide. That answer just got a longer shelf life. On July 9, 2026, WP Engine and Automattic sat through a six-hour settlement conference. They left with nothing resolved. An August 5 joint filing with the court confirmed what the silence already suggested — negotiations had been stalled for months, with WP Engine accusing Automattic of “stonewalling” and Automattic characterizing WP Engine’s demands as excessive.
The case, WPEngine, Inc. v. Automattic Inc. (4:24-cv-06917), is now grinding through a fight over the scope of discovery — what evidence each side must produce, and how broadly the investigation can reach. A hearing before Judge Donna Ryu has been scheduled to sort that out. Trial itself remains on calendar for February 2027.
What’s actually at stake in that trial isn’t just a corporate dispute. The rulings will establish what wordpress.org access means legally, who controls the plugin repository, and whether the leverage Automattic applied to the WordPress ecosystem was lawful. Those aren’t abstract questions. They determine what plugin distribution looks like going forward, and what the safety net is for organizations whose operations run on plugins they don’t own or control.
The February 2027 trial won’t just settle a grudge — it will set the legal boundary around the infrastructure that tens of thousands of institutions rely on quietly, every day.
For our clients — universities, health systems, and nonprofits running complex WordPress infrastructure — the posture we recommend hasn’t changed: don’t treat this as a fire drill, and don’t treat it as resolved. Use the runway before trial to audit plugin dependencies, understand what you’d do if a key plugin disappeared from the repository, and think seriously about whether FAIR or a curated plugin mirror belongs in your stack. That’s not panic. It’s just sensible maintenance while the adults sort out the legal structure around a platform you use every day.
We’ll be watching the discovery hearing and updating clients as milestones land. February is far enough away that there’s time to act thoughtfully. We’d rather you use that time than wish you had.