diff --git a/docs/release-notes.rst b/docs/release-notes.rst
index bc9700d7fe..2e57328293 100644
--- a/docs/release-notes.rst
+++ b/docs/release-notes.rst
@@ -16,6 +16,12 @@ Bug fixes
 Behaviour changes
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
+Other
+~~~~~
+* Removed some unnecessary files from the source distribution
+  to reduce its size. (:issue:`2686`)
+
+
 .. _release_3.0.0:
 
 3.0.0
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 96b7ead74b..a88e43c51d 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -2,6 +2,13 @@
 requires = ["hatchling", "hatch-vcs"]
 build-backend = "hatchling.build"
 
+[tool.hatch.build.targets.sdist]
+exclude = [
+  "/.github",
+  "/bench",
+  "/docs",
+  "/notebooks"
+]
 
 [project]
 name = "zarr"