diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index 1448f05a..1e2012b4 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
   <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
   <artifactId>jackson-annotations</artifactId>
   <name>Jackson-annotations</name>
-  <version>2.20.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
+  <version>2.20-SNAPSHOT</version>
   <packaging>jar</packaging>
   <description>Core annotations used for value types, used by Jackson data binding package.
   </description>
diff --git a/release-notes/VERSION-2.x b/release-notes/VERSION-2.x
index 388998e4..901c8aba 100644
--- a/release-notes/VERSION-2.x
+++ b/release-notes/VERSION-2.x
@@ -1,19 +1,22 @@
 Project: jackson-annotations
 
-NOTE: Annotations module will never contain changes in patch versions,
- only .0 releases can have changes. We may still release patch versions, but
- they will be identical to .0 versions, and only released for convenience
- (developers can line up all Jackson components with same patch version number).
- Main components will typically depend on .0 versions: please do NOT file
- issues against this being a bug; it is intentional.
+NOTE: Annotations module is released with "simple" version like 2.20 without
+ "patch" number -- except for rare case of critical fixes.
+ This change occurred with Jackson 2.20: prior to it, patch number was included
+ but was meaningless: usually every patch version of a minor release was
+ identical.
+
+NOTE: Jackson 3.x components rely on 2.x annotations; there are no separate
+ 3.x `jackson-annotations` versions released (there were RC versions up
+ to 3.0-rc5 but not after that).
 
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 === Releases ===
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-2.20.0 (not yet released)
+2.20 (not yet released)
 
-No changes since 2.19
+#294: Drop patch number from version for 2.20 and later (no more 2.20.0)
 
 2.19.1 (13-Jun-2025)