diff --git a/Changelog.rst b/Changelog.rst
index 63945467..2ad11753 100644
--- a/Changelog.rst
+++ b/Changelog.rst
@@ -3,9 +3,15 @@
 Changelog
 =========
 
-0.4.5 (dev)
+1.0.0 (dev)
 -----------
 
+Elasticsearch 1.0 compatibility. See 0.4.X releases (and 0.4 branch) for code
+compatible with 0.90 elasticsearch.
+
+ * major breaking change - compatible with 1.0 elasticsearch releases only!
+ * Add an option to change the timeout used for sniff requests (`sniff_timeout`).
+ * empty responses from the server are now returned as empty strings instead of None
  * `get_alias` now has `name` as another optional parameter due to issue #4539
    in es repo. Note that the order of params have changed so if you are not
    using keyword arguments this is a breaking change.
diff --git a/docs/conf.py b/docs/conf.py
index 722075b4..f66593f8 100644
--- a/docs/conf.py
+++ b/docs/conf.py
@@ -50,9 +50,9 @@ copyright = u'2013, Honza Král'
 # built documents.
 #
 # The short X.Y version.
-version = '0.4.4'
+version = '1.0.0'
 # The full version, including alpha/beta/rc tags.
-release = '0.4.4'
+release = '1.0.0'
 
 # The language for content autogenerated by Sphinx. Refer to documentation
 # for a list of supported languages.
diff --git a/elasticsearch/__init__.py b/elasticsearch/__init__.py
index 048c22d2..ac8fc11e 100644
--- a/elasticsearch/__init__.py
+++ b/elasticsearch/__init__.py
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 from __future__ import absolute_import
 
-VERSION = (0, 4, 4)
+VERSION = (1, 0, 0)
 __version__ = VERSION
 __versionstr__ = '.'.join(map(str, VERSION))
 
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 4b114b10..0cac7a6b 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ from setuptools import setup, find_packages
 import sys
 import os
 
-VERSION = (0, 4, 4)
+VERSION = (1, 0, 0)
 __version__ = VERSION
 __versionstr__ = '.'.join(map(str, VERSION))