diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 65aca757..cf4ac07e 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-05)
+Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
 ========================
 
 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
@@ -9,6 +9,22 @@ Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
   headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
   soon).
 
+Improved Build system portability 
+
+  Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
+  specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
+  be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
+
+Documentation update for Ruby bindings
+
+  Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
+
+Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
+
+  - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
+  - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
+  - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
+
 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
 ========================
 
diff --git a/bindings/python/notmuch/version.py b/bindings/python/notmuch/version.py
index a2c790c3..9d9ee2ef 100644
--- a/bindings/python/notmuch/version.py
+++ b/bindings/python/notmuch/version.py
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
 # this file should be kept in sync with ../../../version
-__VERSION__ = '0.8~rc1'
+__VERSION__ = '0.8'
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index c2b75524..ee1630c7 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -1,3 +1,13 @@
+notmuch (0.8-1) unstable; urgency=low
+
+  * New upstream version.
+    - Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
+    - Improved Build system portability 
+    - Documentation update for Ruby bindings
+    - Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
+
+ -- David Bremner <bremner@debian.org>  Sat, 10 Sep 2011 08:53:55 -0300
+
 notmuch (0.8~rc1-1) experimental; urgency=low
 
   * Upstream release candidate.
diff --git a/version b/version
index 867daade..aec258df 100644
--- a/version
+++ b/version
@@ -1 +1 @@
-0.8~rc1
+0.8