diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index fb21e10..7124e14 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,12 +1,36 @@
 > This project uses [Break Versioning](https://github.com/ptaoussanis/encore/blob/master/BREAK-VERSIONING.md) as of **Aug 16, 2014**.
 
+## v2.12.0 / 2016 Jul 24
+
+```clojure
+[com.taoensso/nippy "2.12.0"]
+```
+
+> This is a **major release** that **may** involve some **breaking API changes** in rare cases for users of some low-level or obscure features that have been made private or removed. If your code compiles with this new version of Nippy, you should be fine.
+
+> As with all Nippy releases: this version can read data written by older versions but older versions may not be able to read data written by _this_ version.
+
+> No changes since `2.12.0-RC2`
+> Changes since `2.11.1`:
+
+* **BREAKING**: dropped support for `*final-freeze-fallback*` (rarely used)
+* **BREAKING**: dropped support for `*default-freeze-compressor-selector*` (rarely used)
+* **BREAKING**: made several implementation details private, incl. most low-level `write-<x>` and `read-<x>` fns (rarely used)
+* **Performance**: several significant speed + space efficiency improvements, including more variable-sized types
+* **New built-in types** (these previously fell back to the reader): regex patterns, symbols
+* **New experimental caching feature** (please see `cache` docstring for details)
+* **New**: `fast-freeze`, `fast-thaw` utils (please see docstrings for details)
+* **Change**: `freeze` return val is no longer auto type hinted as `^bytes` (had a performance cost, rarely used)
+* **Hotfix**: `fn?`s were incorrectly reporting true for `serializable?`
+* **Hotfix**: *final-freeze-fallback* back compatibility was broken
+
 ## v2.12.0-RC2 / 2016 Jul 17
 
 ```clojure
 [com.taoensso/nippy "2.12.0-RC2"]
 ```
 
-Changes since `2.12.0-RC1`:
+> Changes since `2.12.0-RC1`:
 
 * **New**: Experimental `cache` feature now supports metadata
 * **Impl**: Some additional minor performance improvements
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index e5cad91..f784234 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -4,8 +4,7 @@
 **[CHANGELOG]** | [API] | current [Break Version]:
 
 ```clojure
-[com.taoensso/nippy "2.12.0-RC2"] ; Dev (unstable), see CHANGELOG for details
-[com.taoensso/nippy "2.11.1"]     ; Stable
+[com.taoensso/nippy "2.12.0"] ; Please see CHANGELOG for details
 ```
 
 > Please consider helping to [support my continued open-source Clojure/Script work]? 
@@ -39,7 +38,7 @@ Nippy is an attempt to provide a reliable, high-performance **drop-in alternativ
 Add the necessary dependency to your project:
 
 ```clojure
-[com.taoensso/nippy "2.11.1"]
+[com.taoensso/nippy "2.12.0"]
 ```
 
 And setup your namespace imports:
diff --git a/project.clj b/project.clj
index 3c98403..ed17dd2 100644
--- a/project.clj
+++ b/project.clj
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-(defproject com.taoensso/nippy "2.12.0-RC2"
+(defproject com.taoensso/nippy "2.12.0"
   :author "Peter Taoussanis <https://www.taoensso.com>"
   :description "High-performance serialization library for Clojure"
   :url "https://github.com/ptaoussanis/nippy"