diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 57b070466ba93f0d45f5448996bb2a7f7cd015b1..5925f4a93404ea0541e7cdf32aaa8b84d62bb823 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -2,10 +2,10 @@ News
 ====
 
 
-Version 2.6.0 beta1
+Version 2.6.0 beta2
 -------------------
 
-*(Released Wed, 23 Mar 2011)*
+*(Released Mon, 11 Jun 2012)*
 
 New features
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~
@@ -256,6 +256,10 @@ Python 2.7 is better supported, and after Ganeti 2.6 we will investigate
 whether to still support Python 2.4 or move to Python 2.6 as minimum
 required version.
 
+Support for Fedora has been slightly improved; the provided example
+init.d script should work better on it and the INSTALL file should
+document the needed dependencies.
+
 Internal changes
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
@@ -291,6 +295,30 @@ verification. This will remove some rare but hard to diagnose errors in
 import-export.
 
 
+Version 2.6.0 beta1
+-------------------
+
+*(Released Wed, 23 May 2012)*
+
+First beta release of 2.6. The following changes were done from beta1 to
+beta2:
+
+- integrated patch for distributions without ``start-stop-daemon``
+- adapted example init.d script to work on Fedora
+- fixed log handling in Haskell daemons
+- adapted checks in the watcher for pycurl linked against libnss
+- add partial support for ``xl`` instead of ``xm`` for Xen
+- fixed a type issue in cluster verification
+- fixed ssconf handling in the Haskell code (was breaking confd in IPv6
+  clusters)
+
+Plus integrated fixes from the 2.5 branch:
+
+- fixed ``kvm-ifup`` to use ``/bin/bash``
+- fixed parallel build failures
+- KVM live migration when using a custom keymap
+
+
 Version 2.5.1
 -------------
 
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index 0a36b0b3460e4d2da6eaa0105a60efa0699f033f..7732351ab2b159e95f7ac4e66ca257b1f5298281 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 m4_define([gnt_version_major], [2])
 m4_define([gnt_version_minor], [6])
 m4_define([gnt_version_revision], [0])
-m4_define([gnt_version_suffix], [~beta1])
+m4_define([gnt_version_suffix], [~beta2])
 m4_define([gnt_version_full],
           m4_format([%d.%d.%d%s],
                     gnt_version_major, gnt_version_minor,