diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
index ecd552a1586..8591a847fd7 100644
--- a/AUTHORS
+++ b/AUTHORS
@@ -287,6 +287,8 @@ Samuel Gutierrez, Los Alamos National Laboratory
   samuel@lanl.gov
 Sayantan Sur, The Ohio State University
   surs@osu.edu
+Selvin Xavier, Broadcom
+  selvin.xavier@broadcom.com
 Sergey Oblomov, Mellanox
   sergeyo@mellanox.com
 Sharon Melamed, Voltaire
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 54cd5fb253e..3ecb0e86e9d 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -53,6 +53,27 @@ included in the vX.Y.Z section and be denoted as:
    (** also appeared: A.B.C)  -- indicating that this item was previously
                                  included in release version vA.B.C.
 
+2.1.6 -- January 2019
+---------------------
+
+- Update the openib BTL to handle a newer flavor of the
+  ibv_exp_query() API.  Thanks to Angel Beltre (and others) for
+  reporting the issue.
+- Fix a segv when specifying a username in a hostfile.  Thanks to
+  StackOverflow user @derangedhk417 for reporting the issue.
+- Work around Oracle compiler v5.15 bug (which resulted in a failure
+  to compile Open MPI source code).
+- Disable CUDA async receive support in the openib BTL by default
+  because it is broken for sizes larger than the GPUDirect RDMA
+  limit.  User can set the MCA variable btl_openib_cuda_async_recv to
+  true to re-enable CUDA async receive support.
+- Various atomic and shared memory consistency bug fixes, especially
+  affecting the vader (shared memory) BTL and PMIx.
+- Add openib BTL support for BCM57XXX and BCM58XXX Broadcom HCAs.
+- Fix segv in oob/ud component.  Thanks to Bal�zs Hajgat� for
+  reporting the issue.
+
+
 2.1.5 -- August 2018
 --------------------
 
diff --git a/README b/README
index 3fc25661435..1f4c0cd49e1 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ Much, much more information is also available in the Open MPI FAQ:
 ===========================================================================
 
 The following abbreviated list of release notes applies to this code
-base as of this writing (August 2018):
+base as of this writing (January, 2019):
 
 General notes
 -------------
diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
index a999324d2cf..2bfff73d77b 100644
--- a/VERSION
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ release=6
 # requirement is that it must be entirely printable ASCII characters
 # and have no white space.
 
-greek=a1
+greek=rc1
 
 # If repo_rev is empty, then the repository version number will be
 # obtained during "make dist" via the "git describe --tags --always"
@@ -91,8 +91,8 @@ libmpi_usempi_tkr_so_version=32:0:12
 libmpi_usempi_ignore_tkr_so_version=31:1:11
 libmpi_usempif08_so_version=31:1:11
 
-libopen_rte_so_version=30:4:10
-libopen_pal_so_version=30:4:10
+libopen_rte_so_version=30:5:10
+libopen_pal_so_version=30:5:10
 libmpi_java_so_version=30:0:10
 liboshmem_so_version=30:3:10
 libompitrace_so_version=30:0:10