It’s been a busy week! Over the past few days we’ve shipped updates across the whole Events Manager family: core, Pro, and the payment add-ons. The headlines are a new EU compliance feature and two new payment gateways, and it’s all live now. This post runs through what landed, with more detailed write-ups to follow over the coming days.

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.