diff --git a/man/meson.1 b/man/meson.1
index b6ceb2a27fbe..41917a97db30 100644
--- a/man/meson.1
+++ b/man/meson.1
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.TH MESON "1" "July 2024" "meson 1.5.0" "User Commands"
+.TH MESON "1" "October 2024" "meson 1.6.0" "User Commands"
 .SH NAME
 meson - a high productivity build system
 .SH DESCRIPTION
diff --git a/mesonbuild/coredata.py b/mesonbuild/coredata.py
index 276c3a67807b..250e6a1f16f6 100644
--- a/mesonbuild/coredata.py
+++ b/mesonbuild/coredata.py
@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ class SharedCMDOptions(Protocol):
 #
 # Pip requires that RCs are named like this: '0.1.0.rc1'
 # But the corresponding Git tag needs to be '0.1.0rc1'
-version = '1.5.99'
+version = '1.6.0.rc1'
 
 # The next stable version when we are in dev. This is used to allow projects to
 # require meson version >=1.2.0 when using 1.1.99. FeatureNew won't warn when