Hi all, We are please to announce the first¹ release candidate of the 3.9.0 meso² release. Pre-built wheels are available for most major platforms, and can be installed using `pip install matplotlib==3.9.0rc2`. Other packages may also be available already; please check with your preferred source. This release is the work of 170 authors over 393 Pull Requests, fixing 86 Issues. A preliminary set of release notes may be found at https://matplotlib.org/3.9.0/users/release_notes.html <https://matplotlib.org/3.9.0/users/releases.html>#version-3-9 and the milestone on GitHub: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/milestone/78?closed=1 ¹ Note, due to technical issues this release candidate is 3.9.0rc2. ² Starting with this release, we have moved to the Effective Versioning scheme: https://jacobtomlinson.dev/effver/ -- Elliott