diff --git a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.24.md b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.24.md
index bac0a5998..d4af3cb51 100644
--- a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.24.md
+++ b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.24.md
@@ -269,7 +269,7 @@
   e.g. `--warn-large-path-threshold 100M`.
 
 
-# Contributors
+## Contributors
 
 This release was made possible by the following 43 contributors:
 
diff --git a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.25.md b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.25.md
index 29e3e509c..cfde8b1ef 100644
--- a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.25.md
+++ b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.25.md
@@ -77,7 +77,7 @@
   `<nix/fetchurl.nix>` is also known as the builtin derivation builder `builtin:fetchurl`. It's not to be confused with the evaluation-time function `builtins.fetchurl`, which was not affected by this issue.
 
 
-# Contributors
+## Contributors
 
 This release was made possible by the following 58 contributors:
 
diff --git a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.26.md b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.26.md
index d2a890eb6..0c3df828f 100644
--- a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.26.md
+++ b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.26.md
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@
 
 - Evaluation caching now works for dirty Git workdirs [#11992](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/11992)
 
-# Contributors
+## Contributors
 
 This release was made possible by the following 45 contributors:
 
diff --git a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.27.md b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.27.md
index 3643f7476..34da62525 100644
--- a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.27.md
+++ b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.27.md
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@
   blake3-34P4p+iZXcbbyB1i4uoF7eWCGcZHjmaRn6Y7QdynLwU=
   ```
 
-# Contributors
+## Contributors
 
 This release was made possible by the following 21 contributors:
 
diff --git a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.28.md b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.28.md
index 6da09546e..93ea2cfde 100644
--- a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.28.md
+++ b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.28.md
@@ -82,7 +82,7 @@ This completes the infrastructure overhaul for the [RFC 132](https://github.com/
   Although this change is not as critical, we figured it would be good to do this API change at the same time, also.
   Also note that we try to keep the C API compatible, but we decided to break this function because it was young and likely not in widespread use yet. This frees up time to make important progress on the rest of the C API.
 
-# Contributors
+## Contributors
 
 This earlier-than-usual release was made possible by the following 16 contributors:
 
diff --git a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.29.md b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.29.md
index ad63fff2f..b59d6d6f0 100644
--- a/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.29.md
+++ b/doc/manual/source/release-notes/rl-2.29.md
@@ -111,7 +111,7 @@ This fact is counterbalanced by the fact that most of those changes are bug fixe
   This in particular prevents parts of GCC 14's diagnostics from being improperly filtered away.
 
 
-# Contributors
+## Contributors
 
 
 This release was made possible by the following 40 contributors:
diff --git a/maintainers/release-notes b/maintainers/release-notes
index 6586b22dc..5bb492227 100755
--- a/maintainers/release-notes
+++ b/maintainers/release-notes
@@ -157,7 +157,7 @@ section_title="Release $version_full ($DATE)"
 
   if ! $IS_PATCH; then
     echo
-    echo "# Contributors"
+    echo "## Contributors"
     echo
     VERSION=$version_full ./maintainers/release-credits
   fi