diff --git a/man/meson.1 b/man/meson.1
index c2c49cfbd..7e9d7d8be 100644
--- a/man/meson.1
+++ b/man/meson.1
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.TH MESON "1" "July 2023" "meson 1.2.0" "User Commands"
+.TH MESON "1" "October 2023" "meson 1.3.0" "User Commands"
 .SH NAME
 meson - a high productivity build system
 .SH DESCRIPTION
diff --git a/mesonbuild/coredata.py b/mesonbuild/coredata.py
index f91c5837f..29a3d0eec 100644
--- a/mesonbuild/coredata.py
+++ b/mesonbuild/coredata.py
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ if T.TYPE_CHECKING:
 #
 # Pip requires that RCs are named like this: '0.1.0.rc1'
 # But the corresponding Git tag needs to be '0.1.0rc1'
-version = '1.2.99'
+version = '1.3.0.rc1'
 
 # The next stable version when we are in dev. This is used to allow projects to
 # require meson version >=1.2.0 when using 1.1.99. FeatureNew won't warn when