diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index cfaa35c2..be7159d6 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 Package: bbotk
 Title: Black-Box Optimization Toolkit
-Version: 1.2.0
+Version: 1.2.0.9000
 Authors@R: c(
     person("Marc", "Becker", , "marcbecker@posteo.de", role = c("cre", "aut"),
            comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0002-8115-0400")),
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 4b372ee3..5aad46a9 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+# bbotk (development version)
+
 # bbotk 1.2.0
 
 * feat: `ContextBatch` and `ContextAsync` have a `result_extra` field now to access additional results passed to the instance.