Folks can now request one of the 300 tickets available for this year’s State of the Word, scheduled for December 16 in Tokyo, Japan.
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg will deliver his 18th annual address to a live audience at Tokyo Node Hall in the Toranomon Hills Station Tower. The event will be live streamed via the WordPress YouTube channel.
As with previous years, the address will be followed by a Q&A, giving attendees the chance to ask Mullenweg questions directly.
It’s the second time the State of the Word will be hosted outside of North America. Last year’s event was held in Madrid, Spain. The first State of the Word was held in 2006 in San Francisco before its location started shifting to whichever city was hosting WordCamp US. In 2020, the event briefly went virtual after WordCamp US 2020 was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the WordPress Media Corps’ media kit for the event, the decision to host the event outside of the United States reflects the global nature of the WordPress community and the platform’s influence across different cultures and languages. In fact, 56% of WordPress sites are created in languages other than English, and the number of non-English websites is on the rise.
Following the announcement of this year’s State of the Word location at WordCamp Asia 2024 in March, Japanese organizer Shusei Toda told WP Tavern it marked a “monumental moment for the Japanese WordPress community—one of the oldest global communities dedicated to WordPress.” According to Toda, 82% of Japanese websites are powered by WordPress.