Querying by meta key and value
You can make use of REGEXP operator in META_COMPARE. For example: $meta_array[] = array( ‘key’ => ‘_item_allowed_companies’, ‘value’ => $allowed_company, ‘compare’ => ‘REGEXP’ ); $args = array( ‘post_type’ => ‘item’, ‘post_status’ => ‘publish’, ‘posts_per_page’ => $posts_per_page, ‘paged’ => $paged, ‘meta_query’ => $meta_array ); References: WP_Query Custom Field parameters Trac ticket #18736