New: EU right-of-withdrawal compliance (the Widerrufsbutton)

A new EU consumer-protection rule came into force this week, on 19 June 2026. Germany calls it the Widerrufsbutton (§ 356a BGB), but the obligation applies across the EU under Article 11a of the Consumer Rights Directive, as amended by Directive (EU) 2023/2673.

The rule itself is simple. If you sell online to consumers who have a statutory right of withdrawal, you have to give them a prominent “Withdraw from contract” function that works without logging in and stays reachable throughout the withdrawal period.

Events Manager now includes this, built to work wherever in the EU you trade:

• A guest-accessible, two-step withdrawal flow (declare, then confirm), with no account needed.
• A secure 24-hour magic link for customers who don’t have their booking reference to hand, so they can pick the booking from a list.
• An acknowledgment-of-receipt email that records the withdrawal statement and the exact date and time of receipt. It confirms receipt only, not validity.
• Only the data the law allows: name, booking reference, email. A postal address is never required.
• An optional footer link so the function is always within reach.
• German and English copy out of the box, with every legally sensitive label and email editable.

Two things worth knowing. The feature is opt-in and off by default, because most Events Manager sites sell fixed-date events (concerts, shows, a class on a set date), and those are exempt from the right of withdrawal. The sites that need it are the ones selling courses, memberships, retreats, digital downloads and other non-dated services, along with anyone running a mixed catalogue. And Events Manager provides the mechanism, not the legal wording: you paste in your own withdrawal policy and model form from your legal adviser, and we give you the slot for it.

Full setup notes and guidance on who needs this are in the right-of-withdrawal documentation.

Events Manager 7.3.6

A few other things have landed in core recently:

• REST API v1, with full event, location, booking and ticket endpoints, partial updates, a validation endpoint, and extension hooks so Pro and custom event types use the same pipeline.
• AI through MCP. A Model Context Protocol adapter and setup wizard let AI assistants read and manage your events through the authenticated API, now using WordPress application passwords for authentication.
• Gutenberg blocks for the Events Calendar, Events List and Locations List, plus an Event When block for editing dates, times and recurrence directly on the canvas.
• Multiple timeslots per day, including overlapping slots and buffers between them.
• A calendar “dots” style that marks busy days with coloured dots, with a per-day event limit.
• Security fixes for several responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities across the 7.3.x line. We recommend everyone update.

Events Manager Pro 3.8.4

• A waiting-list overhaul: the open, full and closed conditionals now behave correctly, the signup button label is editable, the original booker is preserved when you edit a waitlist booking, the login-form setting is respected, and the row actions work again.
• Booking on behalf of someone else. Managers can create a booking for a guest or another user through the REST/MCP API, mapped onto your custom booking form.
• Pro on the MCP server, so custom forms, coupons and gateways are available to AI assistants alongside core.
• Manual and at-the-gate payments via REST, for marking a booking paid without going through the gateway flow.

Payments: two new gateways, plus updates

Two new ways to take payment:

• Square brings two gateways in one add-on: Square Checkout, a hosted payment page, and Square Web Payments, an embedded card form that keeps customers on your site. Both work in live and sandbox modes, with webhooks and refund and dispute handling. See the Square documentation.
• Xero adds an invoicing, pay-later option. When a booking is made, Events Manager raises an authorised invoice in your connected Xero organisation and either sends the customer to Xero’s online invoice page or emails it to them. The booking confirms automatically once it’s paid, which works well for B2B and invoice-based bookings. See the Xero documentation.

Updates to two existing gateways:

• PayPal 1.4: the Checkout buttons and card fields now render correctly on recurring-event and timeslot booking forms, and we cleared a translation-loading notice on WordPress 6.7 and later.
• WooCommerce 1.1: full HPOS (High-Performance Order Storage) compatibility and support for the new Cart and Checkout blocks, plus fixes to multi-ticket carts, payment retries and checkout attendee details.

More to come

There’s more here than one post can cover, so we’ll follow up with separate write-ups on the right-of-withdrawal flow, the AI and MCP integration, and the new gateways. In the meantime, update from your dashboard and let us know how you get on.

The post Events Manager 7.3.6, Pro 3.8.4, Square, Xero, WooCommerce, PayPal and more! appeared first on Events Manager for WordPress.

We’ve got a bunch of updates out and on the way, including a follow-up update to EM in the works. We’ll touch on the add-on updates in separate posts. Lots happening, stay tuned!

The post Events Manager 7.3.5 appeared first on Events Manager for WordPress.

We put together a short walkthrough video to show you exactly what this looks like from start to finish. Watch till the end to see an upcoming surprise :)

What’s in the demo

Setting up the MCP server (Part 1)
The whole setup lives inside Events Manager’s settings page. There’s a new AI / MCP Setup box that walks you through three steps: confirm you’re on WordPress 7.0+, install and activate the official MCP Adapter plugin (one click from the settings page), and copy the MCP Server URL that appears once everything is ready.

Connecting Claude (Part 2)
With the URL in hand, we head over to Claude, add a custom connector, and hit Connect. Claude discovers all of Events Manager’s capabilities — listing events, checking availability, creating bookings, managing locations, and more — and asks which permissions to grant. We allow everything for the demo, but in production you’d scope this to exactly what the AI needs to do.

The live demo (Parts 3 & 4)
This is where it gets interesting. We gave Claude a single prompt: find five upcoming cooking classes in London, import them as events, create matching locations, add tickets, generate some test bookings, and build out a category and tag. Even running on Sonnet 4.6 — a mid-tier model — Claude worked through the whole task autonomously. It searched for venues, created the events, handled image sideloading (including self-correcting when the first approach didn’t work), set up tickets, and added fake bookings to show the booking flow.

The result: five fully-formed events on the site, a new “Cooking” category, locations across London, and real bookings on each event — all from one prompt, in a few minutes.

We also showed the upcoming mobile app pulling up those same events in real time, including the ability to check in attendees directly from the app.

Try it yourself

Everything shown in the video is live in Events Manager 7.3. The AI / MCP Setup documentation walks through each step, including how to configure Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT connectors, and more.

If you have questions or want to share what you build with it, drop us a note in the support forum.

The post Events Manager + AI (MCP) = ❤️ appeared first on Events Manager for WordPress.

A much smoother AI experience

When we introduced the MCP (Model Context Protocol) connector in 7.3, it authenticated using OAuth tokens. It worked, but in practice those tokens were prone to timing out mid-conversation — which is exactly the moment you don’t want your AI assistant losing its connection to your site.

So we’ve reworked the whole thing to use WordPress application passwords instead. They’re built into WordPress core, they don’t expire out from under you, and they’re far simpler to set up. The upshot is that connecting an AI agent to your events is now more reliable and a good deal less fiddly. If you tried the MCP connector when 7.3 landed and found it temperamental, this is the update that fixes that for you.

Pro users get a nice bonus here as well: your Pro features are now exposed to the MCP server too. That means an AI agent can work with custom booking forms, coupons, gateways and the rest through the same authenticated connection as the core features — no separate setup, it just appears once both plugins are up to date.

“Add a 20% early-bird coupon to my summer workshop and email me the booking link” — the kind of thing an assistant can now actually do end to end.

A growing REST API

We’ve also kept building out the REST API, which is the foundation everything else (including the AI layer) sits on top of:

• Featured images for events and locations, both reading and writing, plus a dedicated media upload endpoint.
• Event categories and tags now carry their colour and image through the API.
• Location geo-discovery endpoints — pull back the countries, regions, states and towns you actually have events in, rather than guessing.
• Smarter booking queries — you can now filter /bookings by location (country, region, state, town, or near a point) and by event date, so headless and integration setups can ask much more precise questions.

None of this is something you’ll trip over in day-to-day use, but if you’re building anything custom on top of Events Manager, there’s a lot more to work with now.

Calendar dots

On the front-end side, the calendar gets a new dots style. Instead of cramming event titles into each day, you can mark days with coloured dots — much tidier on busy months — and set a per-day limit so a single popular day doesn’t blow out your layout. It’s all there as a style choice in the Events Calendar block, so you can mix and match to taste.

More to come!

We have a lot in the pipeline, we’re excited to follow-up very soon with more announcements!

Changelog

Events Manager 7.3.3

• Added: Calendar “dots” style — events can now be marked with coloured dots instead of (or alongside) titles, with a style choice and a per-day event limit exposed in the Events Calendar block.
• Added: REST API support for featured images on events and locations (input and output), a media upload endpoint and ability, and term colour + image on event categories/tags.
• Added: Location geo-discovery REST endpoints (countries, regions, states, towns) and an upcoming_events_count field on the location response.
• Added: REST /bookings now accepts location filters (country/region/state/town/near) and a scope parameter to filter bookings by event date.
• Added: MCP get-booking-requirements now returns per-field validation metadata with country-tuned phone examples, so AI agents can pre-validate bookings.
• Tweaked: The recurring-booking calendar picker now respects the configured default calendar style.
• Tweaked: Improved the MCP experience for AI agents — authentication now uses WordPress application passwords instead of timeout-prone OAuth tokens, with native-app support, and the MCP server now exposes Pro and other add-on abilities alongside core’s.

Events Manager Pro 3.8.2

• Added: Pro abilities (custom forms, coupons, gateways and more) are now exposed on the Events Manager MCP server, so AI agents and headless clients can manage Pro bookings through the same authenticated surface as core.
• Tweaked: Improved the MCP experience — Pro now shares core’s WordPress application-password authentication instead of timeout-prone OAuth tokens, with leaner consent text.
• Fixed: Custom booking and attendee fields now expose validation metadata (with custom regex reconciled against the field type) through the booking-requirements API, so AI agents and headless clients can validate Pro fields before submitting.

The post Events Manager 7.3.3 and Pro 3.8.2 appeared first on Events Manager for WordPress.

We’ve been busy tinkering, and really diving deep into the world of AI contemplating how to best navigate a new era of doing …. well …. everything!

As a result, some big features just dropped;

Alongside a brand new REST API and long-awaited Gutenberg block editor support, the headline feature of 7.3 is AI connectivity.

AI Connectivity (MCP) – Why this matters

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, an open standard developed by Anthropic (Claude) and now widely adopted as the standard, that lets AI assistants talk to your software in a structured, secure way.

Your MCP server connects any assistant that speaks MCP : Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, custom agents directly to Events Manager. One protocol, your choice of AI.

Setup is a couple of clicks

Enable the MCP server in Events → Settings, copy the OAuth URL into your AI, authorize yourself, and you’re done. See our documentation for more information.

What this looks like in practice

The possibilities are genuinely endless — and what isn’t possible today will become possible as the ecosystem evolves. A few examples to get the imagination going:

“Create a 6-week beginner pottery workshop series. Every Tuesday at 7pm starting June 4. $25 per session, or $120 for the full series. Add a 20% early-bird code that expires May 31.”

“Cancel tonight’s session. Refund every attendee, send them a note explaining what happened, and offer them a 20% code for any future workshop in the next 90 days.”

“Which of my custom fields are the strongest predictors of repeat bookings?”

One sentence, in plain English, replacing what used to be a series of admin clicks — or in some cases, a spreadsheet.

Events Manager Pro 3.8 — Pro features, AI-ready

Events Manager core covers events and the basic booking model. Pro 3.8 extends MCP with every Pro feature ; bookings, payments, coupons, custom fields, recurring events, attendee data. Your AI can reach the full stack.

Pro 3.8 is required to unlock the Pro MCP surface.

A new REST API

7.3 also ships a thorough, fully documented REST API. It powers the MCP server under the hood, and it’s available to developers, integrators, and any software that wants to automate Events Manager directly, opening the door to headless setups, mobile apps, syncing integrations, and custom dashboards.

Gutenberg block editor support

A long-awaited request: Events Manager now supports the Gutenberg block editor. Whilst editing in Gutenberg has been somewhat possible in the past, there were various small (but tricky) issues preventing full adoption. That ended with 7.3!

Enable it from the General settings and you’ll be able to edit events and locations directly in the block editor. You’re welcome to still edit in the classic editor; to be perfectly frank, we prefer it for data-driven items like events.

Our existing widgets are now block-compatible too, available under a new Events Manager block category so that calendar, event lists, and location lists you already use can be dropped straight into any block layout.

Security

7.3 patches three vulnerabilities responsibly disclosed via Wordfence:

• CVE-2025-12976 — reported by Muhammad Yudha-DJ
• CVE-2025-12407 and CVE-2025-12408 — reported by thinnawarth mathuros

Thanks to all three for the disclosures.

More to come!

Update, flip the switch in settings, point your AI at it, and see what your events look like when they’re actually connected. We’ll be coming up with fun examples, and power-ups to take things to the next level.

Changelogs

As usual, here’s the more verbose wrap-up of what was done:

The post Events Manager 7.3 and Pro 3.8 appeared first on Events Manager for WordPress.

We are still actively sifting through previously reported bugs across all our add-ons and you can expect multiple updates over the coming weeks.

Security Vulnerability Patches

This update includes some security vulnerability patches which were reported to us recently and prompted this early update, as we are still working through older reported issues. We strongly recommend you update due to these known vulnerabilities.

CVE numbers are in the readmes and will be disclosed in due time. We’d like to thank WordFence for their ongoing security efforts and responsible disclosure policy.

Whilst Pro add-ons are not affected by these vulnerability reports, we also encourage Pro customers to upgrade and have also extended our Cyber Week promotional period a few more days to encourage those that have not recently renewed to do so and have the most supported versions of both the free and Pro plugins.

Reserved vs. Pending Bookings

Another noteworthy change, moreso for developers, in the latest update is the separation of reserved vs. pending bookings. Previously, a pending booking would be considered ‘reserved’ if the setting to reserve pending bookings was enabled.

We have also added #_UNAVAILABLESPACES and #_RESERVEDSPACES as additional event placeholders.

Developer Notes

This caused a few issues with correctly counting ‘pending’ bookings with special statuses, such as offline payments in Pro versions, given the Pro gateways have the option to reserved a pending space or not, overriding the default option for free bookings.

Not all pending bookings are necessarily reserved once you introduce custom pending statuses, and now we count available spaces by considering reserved spaces, vs. previously counting pending spaces (and only if pending spaces are considered reserved).

This is a subtle change, and is backwards compatible with previous Pro versions (and in fact fixes this issue in older Pro versions too). Developers should take note that using the following new filters and functions to count reserved spaces will produce more reliable results:

em_bookings_get_reserved_spaces
em_ticket_get_reserved_spaces

It’s essentially the same as the pending filters, but specific to a reserved state, whereas the original pending filters count as pending and not necessarily reserved.

Changelogs

Events Manager 7.2.3

Events Manager Pro 3.7.2.3

The post Events Manager 7.2.3 and Pro 3.7.2.3 appeared first on Events Manager for WordPress.

Changelogs

Events Manager 7.2.2

Events Manager Pro 3.7.2.2

The post Events Manger 7.2.2 & Pro 3.7.2.2 appeared first on Events Manager for WordPress.

This major new feature involved another overhaul of time-based logic under the hood. Now, you can create single-day events without needing to create recurring events to add multiple times in a day.

What this means

Whilst seemingly a nuance on event creation, this powerful new feature opens the door to a LOT of new possibilities, including truly supporting different event types, such as appointments and general bookings based on multiple times in a day. Along with a new timeslot picker during the booking process, this new coding structure makes the logistics of managing multiple fractions of the same event on the same day much easier.

If you want to go crazy, timeslots are also supported in recurring events too! That means you could create the same event for multiple parts of the week, month, year (or whatever) with different timeslot patterns, date ranges or even different timezones! We’ve meticulously developed this framework of code to layer into all our features to create truly flexible and powerful event structures.

As an example, having wrapped up 7.2, we spent only a few hours to develop a new Pro feature in 3.7.2 for recurring events (launched in 7.1) and timeslots; moving bookings between dates and times. Previously, this sort of feature would have involved clunky coding and required a significantly longer amount of time to implement.

Events Manager Pro Compatibility

We always strive to make our updates compatible with previous Pro versions. In some situations such as this, it’s impossible to implement such powerful features without requiring some updates to our Pro version. Therefore, Pro 3.7.2 is required for timeslot support, and timeslot support is automatically disabled to prevent undesirable and unintended behaviour. However, earlier Pro versions will still work normally but without timeslot support, just as before.

Going Forward

The latest three major updates (7.0, 7.1 and 7.2) have required monumentous amounts of time and effort to implement in this relatively short amount of time. This follows up on a big push for a mountain of different feature updates over the past year.

We’re going to focus momentarily on resolving known bugs, compatibility issues with third party plugins and updating our documentation and website which has had a hard time keeping up with all our addtitions, enhancements and overhauls! We look forward to having the chance to show you all the power of our new suite of functionality before we continue with this exciting journey of creating the most powerful event framework out there.

Developer Notes

Whilst we’ll now be reviewing and updating our documentation to match these new features, there are some general cosiderations to keep in mind especially with current custom code:

• event_id can now be a string, representing the event ID and a timeslot ID, for example $EM_Event->event_id may produce something like 123:123 if the event has timeslots.
• We will now refer to event IDs which include the timeslot as an Event UID
• Supplying an event UID to em_get_event() or new EM_Event() will load an event with a timeslot_id populated.
• To get the actual event ID you can now use the get_event_id() method on the EM_Event, EM_Booking, and EM_Ticket_Booking(s) objects.
• Individual Event timeslots are not stored in wp_em_events, rather are combined with the new table wp_em_event_timeslots re-using the same event_id for same-day timeslots.
• The general event containing timeslots will have the first time and ending time of all the timeslots on that day, and acts like a normal start/end datetime if you load up the general event ID without a timeslot context.

There’s a ton more that goes on under the hood, but we hope these important considerations will help you transition your custom code if necessary. Generally speaking, if you load event with supplied event IDs, just ensure you don’t do any is_numeric() checks, and change that to something like preg_match( '/^(\d+):(\d+)$/', $event_id, $matches ) instead.

Changelogs

Short but sweet, here’s the changes, each one packs a punch!

The post Events Manager 7.2 and Pro 3.7.2 appeared first on Events Manager for WordPress.

We know, we know. Every time we release a major version, we say it’s one of the biggest updates yet. With 7.0, we truly meant it ; that was a complete rewrite of Events Manager. But here we are again, and this release is another massive leap forward. It might not be the biggest rewrite by comparison to 7.0, but it’s certainly right up there, reflecting the level of hard work and dedication we’re putting in right now to push Events Manager further than ever.

With this release, we’re introducing Archetypes, a new foundation that completely redefines how events are created, customized, and managed.

This update also comes with a Pro 3.7 update (integrating some features with Archetypes), deep developer improvements, and a major rewrite of our underlying codebase, setting the stage for endless flexibility.

What Are Archetypes?

Archetypes are a new way to create multiple event types within Events Manager. Instead of being locked into a single “Events” post type, you can now create distinct post types (archetypes), each with its own settings, labels, and behaviors while still powered by the same reliable Events Manager engine.

Flexible Event Types

• Each archetype is its own WordPress post type.
• Separate admin areas for each archetype.
• Independent labels and front-end slugs (for example, /events/, /courses/, /workshops/).
• Dedicated booking areas per archetype.

Some practical examples of archetypes:

• Workshops
• Appointments
• Rentals

Customizable Features

For each archetype, you can enable, disable, or customize features, including:

• Bookings
• Locations
• Taxonomies
• Formatting
• Custom fields
• Time zone support
• Custom formats
• Search forms
• Repeating events
• Email templates
• Recurring events

Separate Booking Management

Each archetype has its own bookings section. In future updates, we’ll expand this further with unified dashboards and cross-archetype lists.

Multisite Integration

• Network admins can create custom archetypes network-wide.
• Choose to enforce all, restrict to certain archetypes, or allow subsites to create their own.
• Define a default archetype for each subsite.

Custom Labels and Slugs

Rename “Events” to anything you like, such as “Activities,” “Workshops,” or “Seminars.” You can even change the underlying post type and slug.

Developer Extensibility

We’ve built Archetypes with extensibility in mind. Almost any option in Events Manager can now be overridden on a per-archetype basis, and more will be added in future releases.

Events Manager Pro 3.7

With Pro 3.7, bookings now report separately for each archetype in the transactions section. This means you can clearly see which transactions belong to archetype bookings.

The Custom Automated Emails and Custom Event Booking Emails features in Pro have also been integrated with custom archetypes. This allows you to create unique automated email rules per archetype, further tailoring communications for each type of event.

In upcoming releases, additional Pro features such as custom booking forms, gateways, and coupons will be toggleable per archetype, with individual formatting overrides.

Note: Users must upgrade to Pro 3.7 to make use of these Archetype-related PRO features.

Developer Notes

This release includes a major rewrite of how post types are generated and registered. Event post types are now arbitrary and flexible with the option to create more than one event CPT while running off the Events Manager engine.

This work lays the foundation for future expansions while maintaining stability and performance. For developers, there are important new functions and best practices:

Option Handling

• Replace get_option() with em_get_option(). This ensures Events Manager returns the correct archetype-specific option value.

Archetype Helper Functions

• Use new helpers in EM\Archetypes for context checks:
  • EM\Archetypes::isevent( $object ) : check if an object belongs to an event post type, instead of checking against EM_EVENT_POST_TYPE
  • More helpers are available for checking locations and related contexts.

Output and Widgets

• Shortcodes and PHP functions (lists, calendars, etc.) accept:
  • event_archetype : specify which archetype to display.
  • If omitted, defaults to the main archetype (the shipped Events post type, regardless of renamed label or slug).

Custom Loops and Displaying Events

• Wrap custom loops to ensure correct archetype context:
  • Start with EM\Archetypes::set_current( $post_type ).
  • End with EM\Archetypes::revert_current().
• This guarantees that archetype-specific settings are respected during rendering.

What’s Next?

Archetypes unlock near-limitless customization possibilities. Adding integration for features or settings that can be customised on a per archetype basis is actually relatively easy. However each one does require testing, there’s a lot of features, so a lot of time consuming testing is required!

Here’s a glimpse of what’s coming regarding further work on this feature:

• Override Anything
  The architecture allows almost any feature or option to be customized per archetype, from categories and locations to booking forms and notifications. We will be adding more and testing them as we go.
• Cross-Archetype Views
  Unified booking dashboards, lists, and calendars that can combine multiple archetypes.
• PRO Feature Matrix
  Toggle individual PRO features per archetype, with independent formatting overrides.

Terminology and Inheritance

With this major new concept inevitably comes new terminology. Below we explain the key terms that will now be used throughout Events Manager and our documentation.

• Archetype: the new umbrella term in Events Manager for defining event types.
• Main Event Archetype: the default event post type shipped with Events Manager. Cannot be removed but can be renamed and altered.
• Location Archetype: tied to location usage. Only one exists, but it’s still considered an archetype.
• Custom Archetypes: unlimited; inherit from the main archetype by default but can override settings independently.

This new terminology will be used consistently in our plugin and documentation moving forward.

Wrapping Up

Archetypes will be a game-changer for many users that run different event flows. They bring flexibility, control, and scalability to Events Manager like never before. Whether you’re a site owner, a developer, or a multisite admin, this update opens up new levels of customization.

And this yet another stepping stone to something bigger! We’re already hard at work on Events Manager 7.2, which will be another major update, possibly our biggest yet in terms of shifting functionality. We’re keeping details under wraps for now (though there might be a subtle hint in this very post ).

Changelogs

Events Manager 7.1

Events Manager Pro 3.7

The post Events Manager 7.1 – Introducing Archetypes appeared first on Events Manager for WordPress.

Additionally, we’ve added some functionality that disables duplication of events and locations on the three most popular duplication plugins, including Yoast Duplicate Post, Duplicate Page, and Duplicate Post. This has caused a lot of confusion and headaches, because duplicating with these plugins break data integrity of our post types, given we store more data outside traditional tables (tickets, bookings, etc.). Whilst this won’t fix issues with already-duplicated events, we hope this will minimize future confusion!

To compensate the above disabling of duplication plugins for our post types, we’ve added location duplication, so copying is always possible for both events and now locations!

7.0.5 Changelog

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