Bump versions to 1.8.1 for release
diff --git a/man/meson.1 b/man/meson.1
index b78cf96..20a54e3 100644
--- a/man/meson.1
+++ b/man/meson.1
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.TH MESON "1" "April 2025" "meson 1.8.0" "User Commands"
+.TH MESON "1" "May 2025" "meson 1.8.1" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
meson - a high productivity build system
.SH DESCRIPTION
diff --git a/mesonbuild/coredata.py b/mesonbuild/coredata.py
index 6d39ec9..daa4e02 100644
--- a/mesonbuild/coredata.py
+++ b/mesonbuild/coredata.py
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@
#
# Pip requires that RCs are named like this: '0.1.0.rc1'
# But the corresponding Git tag needs to be '0.1.0rc1'
-version = '1.8.0'
+version = '1.8.1'
# 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
