The first six months have been full of learnings and accomplishments for WP Credits, the program that brings students to contribute to WordPress as part of their academic journey, and I’d love to invite you all to pause and reflect on where we have landed. We ran two pilots and both taught us something worth sharing. The first tested an alternative mentorship model, where students would complete onboarding on their own and only then be matched with a mentor. It did not prove effective, and instead it confirmed what we had suspected: mentorship is one of the key ingredients of the program’s success. That is why we are launching a new mentorship structure, with regional leads coordinating the work of the mentors across their own regions. I deeply care about this shift, because belonging to a regional community gives students and mentors a real sense of place and shared context, while staying part of the global network keeps everyone connected to something bigger than their own corner of the map. The second pilot, a condensed 50-hour module, was a clear success, and we will run it again in July and August.

A few milestones worth sharing:

• 20+ partnerships, and we are only halfway through the year 🎉. We have already met our 2026 goal of signing 20+ partnerships with schools worldwide. Reaching it this early came down to hard work and the strength of the program in equal measure. WP Credits fills a meaningful gap between classroom learning and the professional world, giving students real contributions they can stand behind and schools a concrete way to connect their teaching to industry practice, which is why so many institutions have been quick to come on board.
• WCEU. At WCEU we saw tangible outcomes in a way that is hard to capture in a report. Students from the program volunteered at the event, key partners spoke on stage about their commitment and how much they believe in what we are building, and we are seeing graduates stay active in their local communities. That last point matters most to me, because it is the clearest sign that when we add human value to the contribution skill-building piece, students carry the experience with them rather than treating it as something they do once and leave behind.

None of this would have been possible without our local communities. Across countries and continents, contributors have championed WordPress Credits with the schools and institutions closest to them, adapting it to their own languages and contexts, opening doors we could never have reached from the outside, and standing by students once they joined. The program scales organically precisely because so many people have made it their own on the ground, and that grassroots energy is what turns a framework into a living, worldwide effort.

What comes next

Now that we have proven the program works and that it scales organically, it’s time to intentionally shift the focus for the next six months. We have hit our partnership goal, the pilots have validated the model, and graduates are staying and contributing on their own. This is exactly the moment to ease off the push for sheer growth and turn our attention to quality, so that we are ready for the much larger scale we expect in 2027 rather than scrambling to keep up with it. Growth stays on the table, just in a measured way: we now aim to reach 35 partnerships by the end of the year, with the new ones opening doors in countries and cities where we do not yet have a presence.

In other words, the second half of 2026 is about building strong foundations before the big jump, not about adding more numbers for the sake of it.

Quality, Retention & Foundations for Scale

Primary focus: deepen the program’s quality and durability while growth is still manageable.

• Build a public dashboard that shows the growth and impact of the program, so the story we have been telling in updates becomes something anyone can see and trust.
• Explore alternative forms of contribution to engage students, broadening what participation can look like beyond the current pathways.
• Analyze student feedback systematically and use it to raise the quality of the program, both in the tools students use and in the processes they move through.
• Ship a retention program for graduates, turning the alumni-to-contributor pipelines our mentors started informally earlier this year into something formal and supported.
• Increase the sponsorship base to secure sponsorship for mentors, so the mentorship model rests on stable funding as we head into a larger 2027.
• Grow with intention toward 35 partnerships by the end of the year. Growth is not the headline this half, but the partnerships we do add should reach new countries and cities, widening where WP Credits has a footprint rather than deepening only the places we already know.

Key outcome 

By the end of 2026, WordPress Credits is not just bigger, it is better. We will have clear, public evidence of our impact, a richer set of ways for students to contribute, a program shaped by what students actually tell us, a retention path that keeps graduates in the community, a sponsorship base that supports our mentors, and a footprint that reaches new countries and cities. That is the foundation we want under us before 2027.

Get involved by joining us on Slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ in the #wpcredits channel, and help the program grow by introducing us to schools or companies you know via our program page.

Props to the following people for reviewing this post: @celigaroe, @gomp, @webtechpooja, @francescodicandia, @naseem10, @roblesloaiza