diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 759546dd45a3e4c5126188c901af70939f26c61e..a706c3f9d1d5b650fe8fc3b3d0e63d90c380a797 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,6 +1,5 @@
 Changelog is kept at [GitHub](https://github.com/Dronehub/minijson/releases),
 here's only the changelog for the version in development
 
-# v2.5
+# v2.6
 
-* added `MiniJSONEncoder`
diff --git a/setup.cfg b/setup.cfg
index a0f4d8507f57be6a2cbf45eb8ed2a38fdc693690..22b7cb19ee924f7040b45a95d97c794c3a907bbc 100644
--- a/setup.cfg
+++ b/setup.cfg
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # coding: utf-8
 [metadata]
-version = 2.5
+version = 2.6a1
 name = minijson
 long_description = file: README.md
 long_description_content_type = text/markdown; charset=UTF-8