Bump for release

Author: notatallshaw

NEWS.rst

@@ -9,6 +9,61 @@
 
 .. towncrier release notes start
 
+26.0 (2026-01-30)
+=================
+
+Deprecations and Removals
+-------------------------
+
+- Remove support for non-bare project names in egg fragments. Affected users should use
+  the `Direct URL requirement syntax <https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/specifications/version-specifiers/#direct-references>`_. (`#13157 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13157>`_)
+
+Features
+--------
+
+- Display pip's command-line help in colour, if possible. (`#12134 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/12134>`_)
+- Support installing dependencies declared with inline script metadata
+  (:pep:`723`) with ``--requirements-from-script``. (`#12891 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/12891>`_)
+- Add ``--all-releases`` and ``--only-final`` options to control pre-release
+  and final release selection during package installation. (`#13221 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13221>`_)
+- Add ``--uploaded-prior-to`` option to only consider packages uploaded prior to
+  a given datetime when the ``upload-time`` field is available from a remote index. (`#13625 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13625>`_)
+- Add ``--use-feature inprocess-build-deps`` to request that build dependencies are installed
+  within the same pip install process. This new mechanism is faster, supports ``--no-clean``
+  and ``--no-cache-dir`` reliably, and supports prompting for authentication.
+
+  Enabling this feature will also enable ``--use-feature build-constraints``. This feature will
+  become the default in a future pip version. (`#9081 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/9081>`_)
+- ``pip cache purge`` and ``pip cache remove`` now clean up empty directories
+  and legacy files left by older pip versions. (`#9058 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/9058>`_)
+
+Bug Fixes
+---------
+
+- Fix selecting pre-release versions when only pre-releases match.
+  For example, ``package>1.0`` with versions ``1.0, 2.0rc1`` now installs
+  ``2.0rc1`` instead of failing. (`#13746 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13746>`_)
+- Revisions in version control URLs now must be percent-encoded.
+  For example, use ``git+https://example.com/repo.git@issue%231`` to specify the branch ``issue#1``.
+  If you previously used a branch name containing a ``%`` character in a version control URL, you now need to replace it with ``%25`` to ensure correct percent-encoding. (`#13407 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13407>`_)
+- Preserve original casing when a path is displayed. (`#6823 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/6823>`_)
+- Fix bash completion when the ``$IFS`` variable has been modified from its default. (`#13555 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13555>`_)
+- Precompute Python requirements on each candidate, reducing time of long resolutions. (`#13656 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13656>`_)
+- Skip redundant work converting version objects to strings when using the
+  ``importlib.metadata`` backend. (`#13660 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13660>`_)
+- Fix ``pip index versions`` to honor only-binary/no-binary options. (`#13682 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13682>`_)
+- Fix fallthrough logic for options, allowing overriding global options with
+  defaults from user config. (`#13703 <https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13703>`_)
+
+Vendored Libraries
+------------------
+
+- Upgrade CacheControl to 0.14.4
+- Upgrade certifi to 2026.1.4
+- Upgrade idna to 3.11
+- Upgrade packaging to 26.0
+- Upgrade platformdirs to 4.5.1
+
 25.3 (2025-10-24)
 =================