It is a rare instance, but sometimes the error message “another update is currently in progress” will display on your screen instead of the update you requested. In most cases, the message will go away by itself after a while, but it could happen that it just stays there. In that case, you should do what we explain in this tutorial.

Why is this message on screen?

It happens if a core WordPress update is running in the background and you try to initiate a new update. If both processes were running together, it could lead to important data loss and issues. To prevent that, the WordPress developpers have created a mechanism that displays the “another update is currently in progress” message instead of running the new update.

How to fix the “another update is currently in progress” message?

Fixing this issue isn’t that hard, but you should do one think first: BACKUP YOUR DATABASE AND WEBSITE!

Once your backup is done, you can start to work on the solution. For that, do the following:

• Open PHPMyAdmin to work directly in your database (if you are not familiar with this, please check with your webhost as instructions will differ from one host to another).
• In PHPMyAdmin, go to the wp_options table (this could be named otherwise if you changed the prefixe).
• In that table, search the option named core_updater.lock. When you find it, delete that line.

After this, you can go back to your WordPress dashboard and you will see that the “another update is currently in progress” error message will be gone for good. You can then resume installing update on your website or do any website maintenance work needed.