diff --git a/CHANGES.rst b/CHANGES.rst
index dfa5d8748a..82c8e38cc5 100644
--- a/CHANGES.rst
+++ b/CHANGES.rst
@@ -1,3 +1,18 @@
+Changes in synapse v0.18.6-rc3 (2017-01-05)
+===========================================
+
+Bug fixes:
+
+* Fix bug where we failed to send ban events to the banned server (PR #1758)
+* Fix bug where we sent event that didn't originate on this server to
+  other servers (PR #1764)
+* Fix bug where processing an event from a remote server took a long time
+  because we were making long HTTP requests (PR #1765, PR #1744)
+
+Changes:
+
+* Improve logging for debugging deadlocks (PR #1766)
+
 Changes in synapse v0.18.6-rc2 (2016-12-30)
 ===========================================
 
diff --git a/synapse/__init__.py b/synapse/__init__.py
index fbb2bb57b0..a1da92ef92 100644
--- a/synapse/__init__.py
+++ b/synapse/__init__.py
@@ -16,4 +16,4 @@
 """ This is a reference implementation of a Matrix home server.
 """
 
-__version__ = "0.18.6-rc2"
+__version__ = "0.18.6-rc3"