diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index dd3c60f..2ed0597 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@
         <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
         <!-- define class name for the descriptor file -->
         <elasticsearch.plugin.classname>com.github.mlnick.elasticsearch.plugin.VectorScoringPlugin</elasticsearch.plugin.classname>
-        <elasticsearch.version>5.4.0</elasticsearch.version>
+        <elasticsearch.version>6.8.17</elasticsearch.version>
     </properties>
 
     <dependencies>