diff --git a/inst/NEWS.Rd b/inst/NEWS.Rd
index 0c79d76d..1129cace 100644
--- a/inst/NEWS.Rd
+++ b/inst/NEWS.Rd
@@ -1,6 +1,68 @@
 \name{NEWS}
 \title{News for Package \pkg{anndataR}}
 
+\section{Version 1.2.0, Bioconductor 3.23 Release (April 2026)}{
+
+  \subsection{New features}{
+    \itemize{
+      \item{
+        Allow manually setting chunk size for HDF5 writes
+      }
+      \item{
+        Add auto-chunking for HDF5 writes to improve performance
+      }
+      \item{
+        Optimise sparse matrix reading performance by avoiding
+        \code{Matrix::sparseMatrix} and constructing objects manually
+      }
+    }
+  }
+
+  \subsection{Bug fixes}{
+    \itemize{
+      \item{
+        Handle unnamed \code{SingleCellExperiment} assays in \code{as_AnnData()}
+        by automatically assigning names with a warning
+      }
+      \item{
+        Improve warnings when items fail to convert between objects and add new
+        warnings and checks
+      }
+    }
+  }
+
+  \subsection{Documentation}{
+    \itemize{
+      \item{
+        Updates to vignettes
+      }
+      \item{
+        Fix broken links
+      }
+      \item{
+        Update author details
+      }
+    }
+  }
+
+  \subsection{Testing}{
+    \itemize{
+      \item{
+        Add a benchmarking system to monitor function performance
+      }
+      \item{
+        Improvements to roundtrip tests
+      }
+      \item{
+        Improvements to HDF5 tests
+      }
+      \item{
+        Improvements to GitHub Actions CI
+      }
+    }
+  }
+}
+
 \section{Version 1.0.0, Bioconductor 3.22 Release (October 2025)}{
   \subsection{Introducing anndataR!}{
     \itemize{