diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 57937b5c..23f8590f 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ requires = [
     "wheel",
     "cmake",
     "mypy",
-    "numpy<=2.0.0",
+    "numpy<2.0.0",
     "pybind11",
     "ninja",
     "xmltodict",
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 96536aa3..ed6943e0 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -174,5 +174,5 @@ def build_extension(self, ext):
     ],
     license="BSD",
     url="https://iohprofiler.github.io/IOHexperimenter",
-    install_requires=["numpy<=2.0.0"]
+    install_requires=["numpy<2.0.0"]
 )