diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 667aa413e..aec59dcc2 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,3 +1,33 @@
+## 2.16.0-rc.0 / 2020-01-30
+
+* [FEATURE] React UI: Support local timezone on /graph #6692
+* [FEATURE] PromQL: add absent_over_time query function #6490
+* [FEATURE] Adding optional logging of queries to their own file #6520
+* [ENHANCEMENT] React UI: Add support for rules page and "Xs ago" duration displays #6503
+* [ENHANCEMENT] React UI: alerts page, replace filtering togglers tabs with checkboxes #6543
+* [ENHANCEMENT] TSDB: Export metric for WAL write errors #6647
+* [ENHANCEMENT] TSDB: Improve query performance for queries that only touch the most recent 2h of data. #6651
+* [ENHANCEMENT] PromQL: Refactoring in parser errors to improve error messages #6634
+* [ENHANCEMENT] PromQL: Support trailing commas in grouping opts #6480
+* [ENHANCEMENT] Scrape: Reduce memory usage on reloads by reusing scrape cache #6670
+* [ENHANCEMENT] Scrape: Add metrics to track bytes and entries in the metadata cache #6675
+* [ENHANCEMENT] promtool: Add support for line-column numbers for invalid rules output #6533
+* [ENHANCEMENT] Avoid restarting rule groups when it is unnecessary #6450
+* [BUGFIX] React UI: Send cookies on fetch() on older browsers #6553
+* [BUGFIX] React UI: adopt grafana flot fix for stacked graphs #6603
+* [BUFGIX] React UI: broken graph page browser history so that back button works as expected #6659
+* [BUGFIX] TSDB: ensure compactionsSkipped metric is registered, and log proper error if one is returned from head.Init #6616
+* [BUGFIX] TSDB: return an error on ingesting series with duplicate labels #6664
+* [BUGFIX] PromQL: Fix unary operator precedence #6579
+* [BUGFIX] PromQL: Respect query.timeout even when we reach query.max-concurrency #6712
+* [BUGFIX] PromQL: Fix string and parentheses handling in engine, which affected React UI #6612
+* [BUGFIX] PromQL: Remove output labels returned by absent() if they are produced by multiple identical label matchers #6493
+* [BUGFIX] Scrape: Validate that OpenMetrics input ends with `# EOF` #6505
+* [BUGFIX] Remote read: return the correct error if configs can't be marshal'd to JSON #6622
+* [BUGFIX] Remote write: Make remote client `Store` use passed context, which can affect shutdown timing #6673
+* [BUGFIX] Remote write: Improve sharding calculation in cases where we would always be consistently behind by tracking pendingSamples #6511
+* [BUGFIX] Ensure prometheus_rule_group metrics are deleted when a rule group is removed #6693
+
 ## 2.15.2 / 2020-01-06
 
 * [BUGFIX] TSDB: Fixed support for TSDB blocks built with Prometheus before 2.1.0. #6564
diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
index 07d875c2d..e04308974 100644
--- a/VERSION
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-2.15.2
+2.16.0-rc.0