diff --git a/docs/release-notes.md b/docs/release-notes.md
index 9b7a9dd653..6cb729f507 100644
--- a/docs/release-notes.md
+++ b/docs/release-notes.md
@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@
 
 ## Latest Changes
 
+## 0.0.44 (2026-09-21)
+
 ### Refactors
 
 * ♻️ Replace the dataclass_transform shim with typing_extensions. PR [#2097](https://github.com/fastapi/sqlmodel/pull/2097) by [@tiangolo](https://github.com/tiangolo).
diff --git a/sqlmodel/__init__.py b/sqlmodel/__init__.py
index ac23abb419..91d9bc8d05 100644
--- a/sqlmodel/__init__.py
+++ b/sqlmodel/__init__.py
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-__version__ = "0.0.43"
+__version__ = "0.0.44"
 
 # Re-export from Pydantic
 from pydantic import Discriminator as Discriminator