diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 5ec0f49cf..4068b4b6a 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -3,6 +3,8 @@
 - Diagnostics related feature requests and improvements [#5951](https://github.com/dotnet/vscode-csharp/issues/5951)
 - Debug from .csproj and .sln [#5876](https://github.com/dotnet/vscode-csharp/issues/5876)
 
+# 2.96.x
+
 # 2.95.x
 * Update RoslynCopilot url to 18.0.898-alpha (PR: [#8696](https://github.com/dotnet/vscode-csharp/pull/8696))
 * Bump Roslyn to 5.3.0-1.25514.3 (PR: [#8700](https://github.com/dotnet/vscode-csharp/pull/8700))
diff --git a/version.json b/version.json
index 6777f550f..61ed86f69 100644
--- a/version.json
+++ b/version.json
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 {
     "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dotnet/Nerdbank.GitVersioning/master/src/NerdBank.GitVersioning/version.schema.json",
-    "version": "2.95",
+    "version": "2.96",
     "publicReleaseRefSpec": [
         "^refs/heads/release$",
         "^refs/heads/prerelease$",