diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index e7296be4e3..0cc02a60b5 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-* V1.6.16dev
+* V1.6.16
   * fixing detection of CK installation even when ck is soft linked
   * changing remote-ck repo URL pointing to cknowledge.org 
     (after moving personal CK server to Azure cloud)
diff --git a/ck/kernel.py b/ck/kernel.py
index d15d3566f9..51f02195a4 100644
--- a/ck/kernel.py
+++ b/ck/kernel.py
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
 # CK kernel - we made it monolithic with a minimal set 
 # of common functions for performance reasons
 
-__version__ = "1.6.16dev"
+__version__ = "1.6.16"
 
 # Extra modules global for the whole kernel
 import sys
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 82a818727a..6597200d58 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
 
 setup(
   name='ck',
-  version='1.6.16dev',
+  version='1.6.16',
   url='https://github.com/ctuning/ck/wiki',
   license='BSD 3-clause',
   author='Grigori Fursin and non-profit cTuning foundation',