From 4261fb1dccde53037494d42745c59583f6644553 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: GitLab Release Tools Bot <delivery-team+release-tools@gitlab.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2024 20:56:19 +0000
Subject: Update VERSION files

---
 VERSION | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
index 7de162561..34c7694fd 100644
--- a/VERSION
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-16.8.0-rc1
\ No newline at end of file
+16.9.0-rc1
\ No newline at end of file
-- 
cgit v1.2.3