diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index cc21f3c..ab703e2 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.
 The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.1.0/),
 and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html).
 
-## [dev] (MM/DD/YYYY)
+## [2.9.0] (10/02/2026)
 
 ### Added
 * Enabled support of Python 3.15 [gh-243](https://github.com/IntelPython/mkl-service/pull/243)
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 
 ### Changed
 * Raised the minimum build-time `Cython` requirement to `3.1.0`, the first release providing the `freethreading_compatible` directive [gh-213](https://github.com/IntelPython/mkl-service/pull/213)
+* Building from source now requires a C11-atomics-capable compiler (on Windows, Visual Studio 2022 17.5 or newer), used by the new `MKLMemory` extension [gh-182](https://github.com/IntelPython/mkl-service/pull/182)
 
 ### Removed
 * Removed the `python-gil` constraint from the conda recipes, which pinned `mkl-service` to GIL-enabled Python 3.14 builds [gh-213](https://github.com/IntelPython/mkl-service/pull/213)
diff --git a/mkl/_version.py b/mkl/_version.py
index 0b0d61a..43ce13d 100644
--- a/mkl/_version.py
+++ b/mkl/_version.py
@@ -1 +1 @@
-__version__ = "2.9.0dev0"
+__version__ = "2.9.0"