diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 017ec2e415..53734cf467 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -11,34 +11,46 @@ We use *breaking* word for marking changes that are not backward compatible (rel
 
 ## Unreleased
 
+## [v0.12.0-rc.0](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.12.0-rc.0) - 2020.04.01
+
 ### Fixed
 
-- [#2288](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2288) Ruler: Fixes issue #2281 bug in ruler with parsing query addr with path prefix
-- [#2238](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2238) Ruler: Fixed Issue #2204 bug in alert queue signalling filled up queue and alerts were dropped
-- [#2231](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2231) Bucket Web - Sort chunks by thanos.downsample.resolution for better grouping
-- [#2254](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2254) Bucket: Fix metrics registered multiple times in bucket replicate
-- [#2271](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2271) Bucket Web: Fixed Issue #2260 bucket passes null when storage is empty
-- [#2339](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2339) Query: fix a bug where `--store.unhealthy-timeout` was never respected
+- [#2288](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2288) Ruler: fixes issue #2281, a bug causing incorrect parsing of query address with path prefix.
+- [#2238](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2238) Ruler: fixed issue #2204, where a bug in alert queue signaling filled up the queue and alerts were dropped.
+- [#2231](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2231) Bucket Web: sort chunks by thanos.downsample.resolution for better grouping.
+- [#2254](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2254) Bucket: fix issue where metrics were registered multiple times in bucket replicate.
+- [#2271](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2271) Bucket Web: fixed issue #2260, where the bucket passes null when storage is empty.
+- [#2339](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2339) Query: fix a bug where `--store.unhealthy-timeout` was never respected.
+- [#2208](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2208) Query and Rule: fix handling of `web.route-prefix` to correctly handle `/` and prefixes that do not begin with a `/`.
+- [#2311](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2311) Receive: ensure receive component serves TLS when TLS configuration is provided.
+- [#2319](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2319) Query: fixed inconsistent naming of metrics.
 
 ### Added
 
 - [#2252](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2252) Query: add new `--store-strict` flag. More information available [here](/docs/proposals/202001_thanos_query_health_handling.md).
-- [#2265](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2265) Compactor: Add `--wait-interval` to specify compaction wait interval between consecutive compact runs when `--wait` enabled.
-- [#2250](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2250) Compactor: Enable vertical compaction for offline deduplication (Experimental). Uses `--deduplication.replica-label` flag to specify the replica label to deduplicate on (Hidden). Please note that this uses a NAIVE algorithm for merging (no smart replica deduplication, just chaining samples together). This works well for deduplication of blocks with **precisely the same samples** like produced by Receiver replication. We plan to add a smarter algorithm in the following weeks.
-- [#1714](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/1714) Run the bucket web UI in the compact component when it is run as a long-lived process.
-- [#2304](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2304) Store: Added `max_item_size` config option to memcached-based index cache. This should be set to the max item size configured in memcached (`-I` flag) in order to not waste network round-trips to cache items larger than the limit configured in memcached.
-- [#2297](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2297) Store Gateway: Add `--experimental.enable-index-cache-postings-compression` flag to enable reencoding and compressing postings before storing them into cache. Compressed postings take about 10% of the original size.
-- [#2357](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2357) Compactor and Store Gateway now have serve BucketUI on `:<http-port>/loaded` and shows exactly the blocks that are currently seen by compactor and store gateway. Compactor also serves different BucketUI on `:<http-port>/global` that shows the status of object storage without any filters.
+- [#2265](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2265) Compact: add `--wait-interval` to specify compaction wait interval between consecutive compact runs when `--wait` is enabled.
+- [#2250](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2250) Compact: enable vertical compaction for offline deduplication (experimental). Uses `--deduplication.replica-label` flag to specify the replica label on which to deduplicate (hidden). Please note that this uses a NAIVE algorithm for merging (no smart replica deduplication, just chaining samples together). This works well for deduplication of blocks with **precisely the same samples** like those produced by Receiver replication. We plan to add a smarter algorithm in the following weeks.
+- [#1714](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/1714) Compact: the compact component now exposes the bucket web UI when it is run as a long-lived process.
+- [#2304](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2304) Store: added `max_item_size` configuration option to memcached-based index cache. This should be set to the max item size configured in memcached (`-I` flag) in order to not waste network round-trips to cache items larger than the limit configured in memcached.
+- [#2297](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2297) Store: add `--experimental.enable-index-cache-postings-compression` flag to enable re-encoding and compressing postings before storing them into the cache. Compressed postings take about 10% of the original size.
+- [#2357](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2357) Compact and Store: the compact and store components now serve the bucket UI on `:<http-port>/loaded`, which shows exactly the blocks that are currently seen by compactor and the store gateway. The compactor also serves a different bucket UI on `:<http-port>/global`, which shows the status of object storage without any filters.
+- [#2166](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2166) Bucket Web: improve the tooltip for the bucket UI; it was reconstructed and now exposes much more information about blocks.
+- [#2172](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2172) Store: add support for sharding the store component based on the label hash.
+- [#2113](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2113) Bucket: added `thanos bucket replicate` command to replicate blocks from one bucket to another.
+- [#1922](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/1922) Docs: create a new document to explain sharding in Thanos.
+- [#2230](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2230) Store: optimize conversion of labels.
 
 ### Changed
 
-- [#2136](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2136) *breaking* store, compact, bucket: schedule block deletion by adding deletion-mark.json. This adds a consistent way for multiple readers and writers to access object storage.
-Since there are no consistency guarantees provided by some Object Storage providers, this PR adds a consistent lock-free way of dealing with Object Storage irrespective of the choice of object storage. In order to achieve this co-ordination, blocks are not deleted directly. Instead, blocks are marked for deletion by uploading `deletion-mark.json` file for the block that was chosen to be deleted. This file contains unix time of when the block was marked for deletion. If you want to keep existing behavior, you should add `--delete-delay=0s` as a flag.
-- [#2090](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/issues/2090) *breaking* Downsample command: the `downsample` command has moved as the `thanos bucket` sub-command, and cannot be called via `thanos downsample` any more.
-- [#2294](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2294) store: optimizations for fetching postings. Queries using `=~".*"` matchers or negation matchers (`!=...` or `!~...`) benefit the most.
-- [#2301](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2301) Ruler: initlialization fails with filepath bad pattern error and rule manager update error.
-- [#2310](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2310) query: Report timespan 0 to 0 when discovering no stores.
-- [#2330](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2330) store: index-header is no longer experimental. It is enabled by default for store Gateway. You can disable it with new hidden flag: `--store.disable-index-header`. `--experimental.enable-index-header` flag was removed.
+- [#2136](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2136) *breaking* Store, Compact, Bucket: schedule block deletion by adding deletion-mark.json. This adds a consistent way for multiple readers and writers to access object storage.
+Since there are no consistency guarantees provided by some Object Storage providers, this PR adds a consistent lock-free way of dealing with Object Storage irrespective of the choice of object storage. In order to achieve this co-ordination, blocks are not deleted directly. Instead, blocks are marked for deletion by uploading the `deletion-mark.json` file for the block that was chosen to be deleted. This file contains Unix time of when the block was marked for deletion. If you want to keep existing behavior, you should add `--delete-delay=0s` as a flag.
+- [#2090](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/issues/2090) *breaking* Downsample command: the `downsample` command has moved and is now a sub-command of the `thanos bucket` sub-command; it cannot be called via `thanos downsample` any more.
+- [#2294](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2294) Store: optimizations for fetching postings. Queries using `=~".*"` matchers or negation matchers (`!=...` or `!~...`) benefit the most.
+- [#2301](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2301) Ruler: exit with an error when initialization fails.
+- [#2310](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2310) Query: report timespan 0 to 0 when discovering no stores.
+- [#2330](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2330) Store: index-header is no longer experimental. It is enabled by default for store Gateway. You can disable it with new hidden flag: `--store.disable-index-header`. The `--experimental.enable-index-header` flag was removed.
+- [#1848](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/1848) Ruler: allow returning error messages when a reload is triggered via HTTP.
+- [#2270](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2277) All: Thanos components will now print stack traces when they error out.
 
 ## [v0.11.0](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.11.0) - 2020.03.02
 
@@ -69,8 +81,6 @@ Since there are no consistency guarantees provided by some Object Storage provid
 - [#2049](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2049) Tracing: Support sampling on Elastic APM with new sample_rate setting.
 - [#2008](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2008) Querier, Receiver, Sidecar, Store: Add gRPC [health check](https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/master/doc/health-checking.md) endpoints.
 - [#2145](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2145) Tracing: track query sent to prometheus via remote read api.
-- [#1848](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/1848) Ruler: Return error messages when trigger reload with http.
-- [#2113](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/pull/2113) Bucket: Added `thanos bucket replicate`.
 
 ### Changed
 
diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
index 20c48e9965..68f8b76941 100644
--- a/VERSION
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-0.12.0-dev
+0.12.0-rc.0
diff --git a/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/courseBase.sh b/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/courseBase.sh
index 53bcd979d2..5ee8a52718 100644
--- a/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/courseBase.sh
+++ b/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/courseBase.sh
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
 #!/usr/bin/env bash
 
 docker pull quay.io/prometheus/prometheus:v2.16.0
-docker pull quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.11.0
+docker pull quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.12.0-rc.0
diff --git a/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/step2.md b/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/step2.md
index 03618d2acc..e1497b52f3 100644
--- a/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/step2.md
+++ b/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/step2.md
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ component and can be invoked in a single command.
 Let's take a look at all the Thanos commands:
 
 ```
-docker run --rm quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.11.0 --help
+docker run --rm quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.12.0-rc.0 --help
 ```{{execute}}
 
 You should see multiple commands that solves different purposes.
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ docker run -d --net=host --rm \
     -v $(pwd)/prometheus0_eu1.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml \
     --name prometheus-0-sidecar-eu1 \
     -u root \
-    quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.11.0 \
+    quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.12.0-rc.0 \
     sidecar \
     --http-address 0.0.0.0:19090 \
     --grpc-address 0.0.0.0:19190 \
@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ docker run -d --net=host --rm \
     -v $(pwd)/prometheus0_us1.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml \
     --name prometheus-0-sidecar-us1 \
     -u root \
-    quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.11.0 \
+    quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.12.0-rc.0 \
     sidecar \
     --http-address 0.0.0.0:19091 \
     --grpc-address 0.0.0.0:19191 \
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ docker run -d --net=host --rm \
     -v $(pwd)/prometheus1_us1.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml \
     --name prometheus-1-sidecar-us1 \
     -u root \
-    quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.11.0 \
+    quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.12.0-rc.0 \
     sidecar \
     --http-address 0.0.0.0:19092 \
     --grpc-address 0.0.0.0:19192 \
diff --git a/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/step3.md b/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/step3.md
index bd69c30c2e..641ddc2947 100644
--- a/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/step3.md
+++ b/tutorials/katacoda/thanos/1-globalview/step3.md
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ Click below snippet to start the Querier.
 ```
 docker run -d --net=host --rm \
     --name querier \
-    quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.11.0 \
+    quay.io/thanos/thanos:v0.12.0-rc.0 \
     query \
     --http-address 0.0.0.0:29090 \
     --query.replica-label replica \