diff --git a/CHANGES.md b/CHANGES.md
index 24497519bc..b53216512f 100644
--- a/CHANGES.md
+++ b/CHANGES.md
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ breaking changes, and mappings for the large list of deprecated functions.
 
 [Migration guide]: https://github.com/openssl/openssl/tree/master/doc/man7/migration_guide.pod
 
-### Changes between 1.1.1 and 3.0 alpha 17 [20 May 2021]
+### Changes between 1.1.1 and 3.0 [xx XXX xxxx]
 
  * The signatures of the functions to get and set options on SSL and
    SSL_CTX objects changed from "unsigned long" to "uint64_t" type.
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 9751bd69c1..50a2fd36e2 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ OpenSSL Releases
 OpenSSL 3.0
 -----------
 
-### Major changes between OpenSSL 1.1.1 and OpenSSL 3.0 alpha 17 [in pre-release]
+### Major changes between OpenSSL 1.1.1 and OpenSSL 3.0 [under development]
 
   * Added migration guide to man7
   * Implemented support for fully "pluggable" TLSv1.3 groups
diff --git a/VERSION.dat b/VERSION.dat
index c02c00168b..89f1d08316 100644
--- a/VERSION.dat
+++ b/VERSION.dat
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 MAJOR=3
 MINOR=0
 PATCH=0
-PRE_RELEASE_TAG=alpha17
+PRE_RELEASE_TAG=beta1-dev
 BUILD_METADATA=
-RELEASE_DATE="20 May 2021"
+RELEASE_DATE=""
 SHLIB_VERSION=3