diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 065d0dbb..cf21169e 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: loo
 Type: Package
 Title: Efficient Leave-One-Out Cross-Validation and WAIC for Bayesian Models
-Version: 2.7.0
+Version: 2.7.0.9000
 Date: 2024-02-24
 Authors@R: c(person("Aki", "Vehtari", email = "Aki.Vehtari@aalto.fi", role = c("aut")),
              person("Jonah", "Gabry", email = "jsg2201@columbia.edu", role = c("cre", "aut")),
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index d9701a95..46f8a44e 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+# loo 2.7.0.9000
+
+Items for next release go here
+
 # loo 2.7.0
 
 ### Major changes