Matt Mullenweg

Automattic confirmed Matt Mullenweg’s return as chairman and CEO in September 2026 after an attempted ouster, capping a coverage arc dominated by leadership and WordPress-control disputes.

Who they are

Matt Mullenweg is WordPress’s co-founder and the chairman and CEO of Automattic, placing him at the center of coverage spanning the WordPress ecosystem, Automattic’s products and workforce, and disputes over the project’s direction.

The recent arc

Coverage peaked in 2024Q4 amid Mullenweg’s conflict with WP Engine and its Advanced Custom Fields plugin. In October, he said WordPress was “forking” ACF, while the ACF team said the plugin had been taken without consent; the same period also brought reports that 159 Automattic employees accepted severance after disagreeing with WordPress’s direction and its handling of WP Engine.

The latest phase is an internal Automattic leadership crisis. Reports on September 9 and 10, 2026 said Mullenweg had been put on paid leave and that CFO Mark Davies was voted interim CEO; Mullenweg alleged Davies had conspired with board members. He subsequently said he had regained control, and Automattic confirmed on September 13 and 14 that he had returned as chairman and CEO with board support. Other coverage has tracked his platform arguments, including his criticism of Cloudflare-backed EmDash and Automattic’s decision to hold Tumblr’s backend migration to WordPress.

The tension

The central tension is control: Mullenweg’s authority inside Automattic has become entangled with contested decisions around WordPress. The WP Engine and ACF dispute exposed friction between WordPress stewardship and outside commercial participants, while the 2026 paid-leave episode made the separate question of board-level control of Automattic explicit. His critique of EmDash as an open-source project built to sell Cloudflare services similarly frames the debate as one over what kind of platform infrastructure serves WordPress’s cross-platform goals.

Why it matters

If Mullenweg’s restored leadership holds, the immediate test will be whether Automattic can move beyond the board challenge while maintaining confidence among employees, WordPress ecosystem participants, and product communities such as Tumblr. The coverage suggests that decisions presented as protecting WordPress’s direction can carry organizational and partner costs, so future disputes over governance, plugins, and platform strategy are likely to remain consequential even though the durability of the latest resolution is not yet clear.

Related: WordPress · Automattic · WP Engine · Tumblr · Mastodon