diff --git a/HISTORY.md b/HISTORY.md
index 2813f31b..48bdaa99 100644
--- a/HISTORY.md
+++ b/HISTORY.md
@@ -1,6 +1,32 @@
 ## History / Changelog
 
 
+### 1.9.0
+
+Extraction:
+- add markdown as explicit output (#550)
+- improve recall preset (#571)
+- speedup for readability-lxml (#547)
+- add global options object for extraction and use it in CLI (#552)
+- fix: better encoding detection (#548)
+- recall: fix for lists inside tables with @mikhainin (#534)
+- add symbol to preserve vertical spacing in Markdown (#499)
+- fix: table cell separators in non-XML output (#563)
+- slightly better accuracy and execution speed overall
+
+Metadata:
+- add file creation date (date extraction, JSON & XML-TEI) (#561)
+- fix: empty content in meta tag by @felipehertzer (#545)
+
+Maintenance:
+- restructure and simplify code (#543, #556)
+- CLI & downloads: revamp and use global options (#565)
+- eval: review code, add guidelines and small benchmark (#542)
+- fix: raise error if config file does not exist (#554)
+- deprecate `process_record()` (#549)
+- docs: convert readme to markdown and update info (#564, #578)
+
+
 ### 1.8.1
 
 Maintenance:
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 97379f1d..a9c20186 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -19,9 +19,6 @@ def get_long_description():
     "Return the README"
     with open("README.md", "r", encoding="utf-8") as filehandle:
         long_description = filehandle.read()
-    # long_description += "\n\n"
-    # with open("CHANGELOG.md", encoding="utf8") as f:
-    #    long_description += f.read()
     return long_description
 
 
diff --git a/trafilatura/__init__.py b/trafilatura/__init__.py
index f0fecc8b..164ea561 100644
--- a/trafilatura/__init__.py
+++ b/trafilatura/__init__.py
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
 __author__ = 'Adrien Barbaresi and contributors'
 __license__ = "Apache-2.0"
 __copyright__ = 'Copyright 2019-2024, Adrien Barbaresi'
-__version__ = '1.8.1'
+__version__ = '1.9.0'
 
 
 import logging