diff --git a/.github/workflows/deploy.yaml b/.github/workflows/deploy.yaml
index 3cd526dd..6660ee61 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/deploy.yaml
+++ b/.github/workflows/deploy.yaml
@@ -72,6 +72,9 @@ jobs:
           CIBW_ARCHS: "${{ matrix.cibw_archs }}"
           CIBW_TEST_COMMAND: "python -c \"import pyresample; assert 'unknown' not in pyresample.__version__, 'incorrect version found'\""
           CIBW_TEST_SKIP: "*_arm64 *_universal2:arm64"
+          # below only for building against unstable numpy
+          CIBW_BUILD_FRONTEND: "pip; args: --no-build-isolation"
+          CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD: "pip install --pre --extra-index-url https://pypi.anaconda.org/scientific-python-nightly-wheels/simple numpy cython setuptools versioneer"
 
       - name: Upload wheel(s) as build artifacts
         uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 1ffb67f4..dc50fd19 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 [build-system]
-requires = ["setuptools", "wheel", "numpy", "Cython>=3", "versioneer-518"]
+requires = ["setuptools", "wheel", "numpy", "Cython>=3", "versioneer"]
 build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"
 
 [tool.ruff]