diff --git a/.github/workflows/upstream-dev-ci.yaml b/.github/workflows/upstream-dev-ci.yaml
index 1aebdff0b65..872b2d865fb 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/upstream-dev-ci.yaml
+++ b/.github/workflows/upstream-dev-ci.yaml
@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ jobs:
     strategy:
       fail-fast: false
       matrix:
-        python-version: ["3.11"]
+        python-version: ["3.12"]
     steps:
       - uses: actions/checkout@v4
         with:
diff --git a/ci/install-upstream-wheels.sh b/ci/install-upstream-wheels.sh
index 68e841b4181..d9c797e27cd 100755
--- a/ci/install-upstream-wheels.sh
+++ b/ci/install-upstream-wheels.sh
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 # install cython for building cftime without build isolation
 micromamba install "cython>=0.29.20" py-cpuinfo
 # temporarily (?) remove numbagg and numba
-micromamba remove -y numba numbagg
+micromamba remove -y numba numbagg sparse
 # temporarily remove numexpr
 micromamba remove -y numexpr
 # temporarily remove backends
@@ -62,13 +62,14 @@ python -m pip install \
     --no-deps \
     --upgrade \
     git+https://github.com/dask/dask \
+    git+https://github.com/dask/dask-expr \
     git+https://github.com/dask/distributed \
     git+https://github.com/zarr-developers/zarr \
     git+https://github.com/pypa/packaging \
     git+https://github.com/hgrecco/pint \
-    git+https://github.com/pydata/sparse \
     git+https://github.com/intake/filesystem_spec \
     git+https://github.com/SciTools/nc-time-axis \
     git+https://github.com/xarray-contrib/flox \
     git+https://github.com/dgasmith/opt_einsum
+    # git+https://github.com/pydata/sparse
     # git+https://github.com/h5netcdf/h5netcdf