Bump version number for rc1.
diff --git a/man/meson.1 b/man/meson.1
index 41917a9..01b9abd 100644
--- a/man/meson.1
+++ b/man/meson.1
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.TH MESON "1" "October 2024" "meson 1.6.0" "User Commands"
+.TH MESON "1" "January 2025" "meson 1.7.0" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
meson - a high productivity build system
.SH DESCRIPTION
diff --git a/mesonbuild/coredata.py b/mesonbuild/coredata.py
index c3e4352..43b8b5b 100644
--- a/mesonbuild/coredata.py
+++ b/mesonbuild/coredata.py
@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@
#
# Pip requires that RCs are named like this: '0.1.0.rc1'
# But the corresponding Git tag needs to be '0.1.0rc1'
-version = '1.6.99'
+version = '1.7.0.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
