diff --git a/CMakeLists.txt b/CMakeLists.txt
index 2ac0efef..312db7db 100644
--- a/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.15)
 cmake_policy(SET CMP0091 NEW) # enable new "MSVC runtime library selection" (https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/variable/CMAKE_MSVC_RUNTIME_LIBRARY.html)
 
 project(libCZI 
-      VERSION 0.61.1
+      VERSION 0.61.2
       HOMEPAGE_URL "https://github.com/ZEISS/libczi"
       DESCRIPTION "libCZI is an Open Source Cross-Platform C++ library to read and write CZI")
 
diff --git a/Src/CMakeLists.txt b/Src/CMakeLists.txt
index 579297ed..22ee9459 100644
--- a/Src/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/Src/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -37,10 +37,16 @@ if (LIBCZI_BUILD_CURL_BASED_STREAM)
     # if (APPLE)  # for MacOS - let's choose Apple's native secure transport backend
     #    set(CURL_USE_SECTRANSP ON)
     # endif(APPLE)
+
+    # On Windows, we can enable the SChannel backend, as it is the native one, and it requires no additional dependencies.
+    if(WIN32)
+      set(CURL_USE_SCHANNEL ON CACHE BOOL "" FORCE)
+    endif(WIN32)
+
     FetchContent_Declare(
         libcurl
         GIT_REPOSITORY  "https://github.com/curl/curl.git"
-        GIT_TAG "curl-8_4_0"
+        GIT_TAG "curl-8_9_1"
         # Set the prefix to control where it's installed
         PREFIX "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/vendor/curl"
         )
@@ -52,7 +58,7 @@ if (LIBCZI_BUILD_CURL_BASED_STREAM)
     set(BUILD_CURL_EXE OFF CACHE BOOL "" FORCE)
     set(CMAKE_POSITION_INDEPENDENT_CODE ON CACHE BOOL "" FORCE)
     set(ENABLE_UNICODE ON CACHE BOOL "" FORCE)
-
+   
     FetchContent_MakeAvailable(libcurl)
   endif(LIBCZI_BUILD_PREFER_EXTERNALPACKAGE_LIBCURL)
 endif(LIBCZI_BUILD_CURL_BASED_STREAM)
diff --git a/Src/libCZI/Doc/version-history.markdown b/Src/libCZI/Doc/version-history.markdown
index 0eb5c7f3..2712bad2 100644
--- a/Src/libCZI/Doc/version-history.markdown
+++ b/Src/libCZI/Doc/version-history.markdown
@@ -25,3 +25,4 @@ version history                 {#version_history}
  0.60.0             | [106](https://github.com/ZEISS/libczi/pull/106)      | with metadata-builder, by default copy the attributes "Id" and "Name" from the channel-node; allow to control the behavior fine-grained
  0.61.0             | [109](https://github.com/ZEISS/libczi/pull/109)      | fix behaviour of `IXmlNodeRead::GetChildNodeReadonly` (for non-existing nodes), new method `ICziWriter::GetStatistics` added
  0.61.1             | [110](https://github.com/ZEISS/libczi/pull/110)      | some code cleanup
+ 0.61.2             | [111](https://github.com/ZEISS/libczi/pull/111)      | update libcurl to 8.9.1 (for build with `LIBCZI_BUILD_PREFER_EXTERNALPACKAGE_LIBCURL=OFF`), enable SChannel (on Windows) by default
\ No newline at end of file