diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 0bad23d015..6ed70ae0f8 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: knitr
 Type: Package
 Title: A General-Purpose Package for Dynamic Report Generation in R
-Version: 1.44.3
+Version: 1.44.4
 Authors@R: c(
     person("Yihui", "Xie", role = c("aut", "cre"), email = "xie@yihui.name", comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0003-0645-5666")),
     person("Abhraneel", "Sarma", role = "ctb"),
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index aa4e0e178c..6761764471 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -4,6 +4,10 @@
 
 - Improved the error message to contain more specific information when YAML chunk options could not be parsed (thanks, @pedropark99, #2294).
 
+## MAJOR CHANGES
+
+- The object `opts_current` will be restored after each code chunk has finished executing. Previously, it would not be restored, which means even for inline R expressions, `opts_current$get()` will inherit chunk options from a previous code chunk (thanks, @rundel, #1988). Besides, `opts_current$get('label')` will return a unique label for inline expressions. One possible application is to construct unique figure paths via `fig_path()` (e.g., ropensci/magick#310).
+
 ## BUG FIXES
 
 - Special characters in the chunk option `fig.alt` are properly escaped now (thanks, @jay-sf, #2290).
@@ -14,16 +18,12 @@
 
 - Add the necessary `\newline` to the last subfigure (thanks, @slrellison, rstudio/rmarkdown#2518).
 
+- Percent signs (`%`) in LaTeX figure captions and short captions are properly escaped now (thanks, @s-u, #2302).
+
 ## MAJOR CHANGES
 
 - `opts_current$set()` without `opts_current$lock(FALSE)` will trigger a warning instead of an error for now and it will become an error in future (#2296).
 
-- The object `opts_current` will be restored after each code chunk has finished executing. Previously, it would not be restored, which means even for inline R expressions, `opts_current$get()` will inherit chunk options from a previous code chunk (thanks, @rundel, #1988). Besides, `opts_current$get('label')` will return a unique label for inline expressions. One possible application is to construct unique figure paths via `fig_path()` (e.g., ropensci/magick#310).
-
-## MINOR CHANGES
-
-- For R Markdown documents, figure output is now wrapped in raw `latex` blocks when the output is LaTeX code (thanks, @s-u, #2302).
-
 # CHANGES IN knitr VERSION 1.44
 
 ## NEW FEATURES
diff --git a/R/hooks-latex.R b/R/hooks-latex.R
index 2beb8d741d..4c2964df61 100644
--- a/R/hooks-latex.R
+++ b/R/hooks-latex.R
@@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ hook_plot_tex = function(x, options) {
       }
       scap = if (is.null(scap) || is.na(scap)) '' else sprintf('[%s]', scap)
       cap = if (cap == '') '' else sprintf(
-        '\\caption%s{%s}%s\n', scap, cap,
+        '\\caption%s{%s}%s\n', escape_percent(scap), escape_percent(cap),
         create_label(lab, if (mcap) c('-', fig.cur), latex = TRUE)
       )
       fig2 = sprintf('%s\\end{%s}\n', cap, options$fig.env)
@@ -192,6 +192,9 @@ hook_plot_tex = function(x, options) {
   )
 }
 
+# % -> \%, but do not touch \%
+escape_percent = function(x) gsub('(?<!\\\\)%', '\\\\%', x, perl = TRUE)
+
 .chunk.hook.tex = function(x, options) {
   ai = output_asis(x, options)
   col = if (!ai) paste0(
diff --git a/R/hooks-md.R b/R/hooks-md.R
index 58272516ac..665b157f9f 100644
--- a/R/hooks-md.R
+++ b/R/hooks-md.R
@@ -5,13 +5,13 @@ hook_plot_md = function(x, options) {
   if (is.null(to <- pandoc_to()) || is_html_output(to))
     return(hook_plot_md_base(x, options))
   if ((options$fig.show == 'animate' || is_tikz_dev(options)) && is_latex_output())
-    return(raw_latex(hook_plot_tex(x, options)))
+    return(hook_plot_tex(x, options))
   office_output = to %in% c('docx', 'pptx', 'rtf', 'odt')
   if (need_special_plot_hook(options)) {
     if (is_latex_output()) {
       # Pandoc < 1.13 does not support \caption[]{} so suppress short caption
       if (is.null(options$fig.scap)) options$fig.scap = NA
-      return(raw_latex(hook_plot_tex(x, options)))
+      return(hook_plot_tex(x, options))
     }
     if (office_output) {
       if (options$fig.align != 'default') {