diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 737f15126cdfd4b6a7b0481a5771dd87038efe8a..40cc96ea0958da7c9ec74f0e792f43696bdd2117 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,55 @@
+Fri Aug 09 2019 Marcin Åšlusarz <marcin.slusarz@intel.com>
+
+	* Version 1.6.1-rc1
+
+	This release fixes possible pool corruptions on Windows
+	(see https://github.com/pmem/pmdk/pull/3728 for details),
+	improves compatibility with newer Linux kernels with
+	respect to Device DAX detection, fixes pmemobj space management
+	for large pools, improves compatibility with newer toolchains,
+	incorporates build fixes for FreeBSD and fixes a number of
+	smaller bugs.
+
+	Detailed list of bug fixes:
+	- common: (win) fix possible pool file coruption (#972, #715, #603)
+	- common: implement correct / robust device_dax_alignment (#1071)
+	- obj: fix recycler not locating unused chunks
+	- doc: update pmemobj_tx_lock documentation wrt behavior on fail
+	- common: fix persistent domain detection (#1093)
+	- common: vecq: fix a pointer-to-struct aliasing violation
+	  (crash on arm64)
+	- common: fix minor issues related to ndctl linking
+	- obj: drop recursion from pmemobj_next
+	- common: fix bug in badblock file error handling
+	- obj: fix handling of malloc failures
+	- common: fix handling of malloc failures (ctl)
+	- jemalloc: fix build with gcc 9
+	- obj: don't overwrite errno when palloc_heap_check_remote fails
+	- doc: fix pmreorder emit log macro
+	- rpmem: change order of rpmem init (#1043)
+	- common: Fix build failure due to unused macro PAGE_SIZE
+	- common: support older versions of pkg-config
+	- tools: link with release variant of pmemcommon
+	- common: add PMDK prefix to local copy of queue.h (#990)
+	- rpmem: switch to using an open coded basename (FreeBSD)
+	- common: posix_fallocate: guard against integer underflow in
+	  check (FreeBSD)
+	- test: support Valgrind 3.15
+	- test: skip if fi_info is missing
+	- test: (win) fix sparsefile error handling
+	- test: fix libpmempool_feature tests that match logs
+	- test: remove vmem_delete test (#1074)
+	- test: adjust matchfiles in vmem_valgrind_region test (#1087)
+	- test: remove old log files for windows (#1013)
+	- test: remove invalid expect_normal_exit (#1092)
+	- test: suppress ld leak (#1098)
+	- test: Expose necessary symbols in libvmmalloc_dummy_funcs
+	  (FreeBSD)
+	- test: fix tests failing because `tput` fails (FreeBSD)
+	- test: avoid obj_critnib_mt taking very long on many-core machines
+	- test: deal with libndctl's path without build system
+	- test: overwrite old log in pmempool_create/TEST14.PS1
+
 Tue Mar 26 2019 Marcin Åšlusarz <marcin.slusarz@intel.com>
 
 	* Version 1.6
diff --git a/GIT_VERSION b/GIT_VERSION
deleted file mode 100644
index f59cc05cb6952f2fd8a3be03c1765c99881acb22..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
--- a/GIT_VERSION
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-$Format:%h %d$
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..e6cf514dcff39a5bdfc8e594ac5a96b35991e1ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+1.6.1-rc1