From db1b40c0ae61a0b647c114b22c990419de05de7a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: GitLab Release Tools Bot <delivery-team+release-tools@gitlab.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2024 10:12:06 +0000
Subject: Update VERSION files

[ci skip]
---
 VERSION | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
index bd1b353424b..c440b4a8696 100644
--- a/VERSION
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-16.8.0-pre
\ No newline at end of file
+16.9.0-pre
\ No newline at end of file
-- 
cgit v1.2.3