diff --git a/.github/workflows/release.yml b/.github/workflows/release.yml
index 0d7adc5..826ca20 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/release.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/release.yml
@@ -378,10 +378,28 @@ jobs:
         tag_name: ${{ github.ref_name }}
         name: ${{ github.ref_name }}
         draft: true
-        # Anything with a hyphen (rc, beta, alpha, etc.) is a pre-release;
-        # only bare semver like tray-v0.2.0 gets marked Latest on the
-        # GH releases page.
-        prerelease: ${{ contains(github.ref_name, '-') }}
+        # Only bare semver (e.g. `tray-v0.2.0`) gets marked Latest on
+        # the GH releases page; anything with an `-alpha` / `-beta` /
+        # `-rc` channel suffix is a pre-release.
+        #
+        # IMPORTANT: do NOT test for a hyphen in `ref_name` — the
+        # post-2026-05-23 track split prefixes every tray tag with
+        # `tray-`, so the previous `contains(ref_name, '-')` form
+        # evaluated true for live tags too. Result: every release
+        # from tray-v1.8.5 onward was wrongly flagged Pre-release in
+        # the GH UI. Match against the channel tokens explicitly so
+        # the test is stable against any future tag-prefix change.
+        prerelease: ${{ contains(github.ref_name, '-alpha') || contains(github.ref_name, '-beta') || contains(github.ref_name, '-rc') }}
+        # `make_latest` is independent of `prerelease`. Setting it
+        # explicitly here so live tags grab the Latest badge at
+        # creation time. Without this, when a release was previously
+        # mis-created as prerelease and then edited to non-prerelease
+        # (the 2026-05-27 backfix of tray-v1.8.7 / tray-v1.8.8), the
+        # Latest badge stayed on the older live tag — because flipping
+        # `prerelease` doesn't touch `make_latest`. Quoted strings
+        # because the action expects "true"/"false"/"legacy", not
+        # YAML booleans. Mirrors the prerelease expression inverted.
+        make_latest: ${{ (contains(github.ref_name, '-alpha') || contains(github.ref_name, '-beta') || contains(github.ref_name, '-rc')) && 'false' || 'true' }}
         # `generate_release_notes: false` — our per-component changelog
         # in release-body.md replaces GH's auto-generated notes, which
         # would otherwise leak platform-only commits into the tray