diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 7caad90089..f845c8e45d 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ Maintainer: Yihui Xie <xie@yihui.name>
 Description: Provides a general-purpose tool for dynamic report generation in R
     using Literate Programming techniques.
 Depends:
-    R (> 3.0.2)
+    R (>= 3.1.0)
 Imports:
     evaluate (>= 0.8),
     digest,
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 105661152a..5d0e9ee393 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+# CHANGES IN knitr VERSION 1.15 (unreleased)
+
+## MAJOR CHANGES
+
+- the minimal version of R required for **knitr** is 3.1.0 now (#1269)
+
 # CHANGES IN knitr VERSION 1.14
 
 ## NEW FEATURES