Wagtail 7.0 brings some big quality-of-life improvements for content creators and developers. The headline change is that you can now save drafts and preview pages without filling out all the mandatory fields — required fields are only enforced at publish time. This makes drafting much smoother, removing the need for placeholder text like "CHANGE THIS" just to save progress. Alongside that, Wagtail 7.0 adds better pagination so you can quickly jump to the first or last page in listings and choosers, saving time. It also officially supports Django 5.2, introduces a new method to set default privacy settings per page type, and brings several small UX upgrades like showing locales in listings and smarter "Publish" button behavior. Behind the scenes, this release moves Wagtail closer to full autosave, where manual draft saving will eventually become unnecessary.
Because of these changes, Wagtail 7.0 includes some breaking updates that need attention before upgrading. The new way drafts are saved means that validation works a bit differently now — drafts no longer require all fields to be filled in, so if your site depends on strict checks during saving, you'll want to test carefully and adjust if needed. There are also some updates to how tagging and user forms are configured, which might require small changes in your project settings. On the bright side, Wagtail's long-term support releases are now timed to match Django's schedule, making future upgrade planning smoother. Overall, Wagtail 7.0 clears out old hurdles, adds flexibility for creators, and sets the foundation for bigger features, but upgrading will take a little extra care.