diff --git a/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md b/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md
index 8919f804b52..18f32c3a8a5 100644
--- a/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md
+++ b/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md
@@ -24,4 +24,4 @@ Describe what you expect the output to be. Knowing the correct behavior is also
 Provide any additional information here.
 
 #### Current Version:
-v2.17.1
+v2.18.0
diff --git a/RELEASE-NOTES.txt b/RELEASE-NOTES.txt
index 0b600cfaefc..fbe2bedd445 100644
--- a/RELEASE-NOTES.txt
+++ b/RELEASE-NOTES.txt
@@ -5,9 +5,64 @@ Note: these are the release notes for the stan-dev/stan repository.
 Further changes may arise at the interface level (stan-dev/{rstan,
 pystan, cmdstan}) and math library level (stan-dev/math).
 
+v2.18.0 (13 July 2018)
+======================================================================
+This is our first release with parallelism (threading and MPI)!
+
+New Features
+--------------------------------------------------
+* New functions from Math library:
+  - map_rect
+  - multi_normal_rng
+  - multi_normal_cholesky_rng
+  - multi_student_t_rng
+  - many vectorized RNGs
+    - multi_normal_rng
+    - multi_normal_cholesky_rng
+    - multi_student_t_rng
+    - bernoulli_rng
+    - beta_binomial_rng
+    - binomial_rng
+    - neg_binomial_2_rng
+    - neg_binomial_2_log_rng
+    - neg_binomial_rng
+    - poisson_rng
+    - poisson_log_rng
+    - uniform_rng
+    - von_mises_rng
+  - qr_thin_Q
+  - qr_thin_R
+  - matrix_exp_multiply
+  - scale_matrix_exp_multiply
+  - integrate_ode_adams
+  - log_mix
+  - std_normal
+  - ordered_logistic_log
+  - ordered_probit_log
+
+* Manual now available in HTML (#2558)
+* other vectorized RNGs (#2467)
+* Easier-to-use algebra_solver
+* Changes to effective sample size calculation (#2451)
+* Foreach loops (#2438)
+* Standalone generated quantities (#2434)
+* Allow users to qualify function parameters as data (#2430)
+
+Bug Fixes
+--------------------------------------------------
+* Better error messages (#2508, #2554)
+* Fixes the behavior in mcmc_writer so that when there's an exception thrown in the model's generated quantities block, it writes out the parameter values and NaN for any generated quantity (#2571)
+* Allow initialization of a Stan program to continue when there's a violation of constraints in transformed parameters (#2570)
+* Fixed `+=` #(2482)
+* rising_factorial and falling_factorial type checking (#2413)
+* have parser check return type of integrate_ode_bdf functional (#2411)
+* increase precision in output of ELBO values (#2406)
+* ternary op fixes (#2101)
+
+
 v2.17.1 (11 December 2017)
 ======================================================================
-This is a bugfix release fixing a performance regression in the math repo. See 
+This is a bugfix release fixing a performance regression in the math repo. See
 https://github.com/stan-dev/math/issues/667 for more details.
 
 v2.17.0 (05 September 2017)
diff --git a/src/docs/reference-manual/statements.Rmd b/src/docs/reference-manual/statements.Rmd
index 28f0b25ac78..c9c26a8817e 100644
--- a/src/docs/reference-manual/statements.Rmd
+++ b/src/docs/reference-manual/statements.Rmd
@@ -150,7 +150,7 @@ An assignment statement consists of a variable (possibly multivariate
 with indexing information) and an expression.  Executing an
 assignment statement evaluates the expression on the right-hand side
 and assigns it to the (indexed) variable on the left-hand side.
-An example of a simple assignment is as follows.^[In versions of Stan before 2.17.1, the operator `<-` was used for assignment rather than using the equal sign `=`.  The old operator `<-` is now deprecated and will print a warning. In the future, it will be removed.]
+An example of a simple assignment is as follows.^[In versions of Stan before 2.18.0, the operator `<-` was used for assignment rather than using the equal sign `=`.  The old operator `<-` is now deprecated and will print a warning. In the future, it will be removed.]
 
 ```stan
 n = 0;
diff --git a/src/doxygen/doxygen.cfg b/src/doxygen/doxygen.cfg
index 290cebb0768..a703576d6d3 100644
--- a/src/doxygen/doxygen.cfg
+++ b/src/doxygen/doxygen.cfg
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ PROJECT_NAME           = "Stan"
 # could be handy for archiving the generated documentation or if some version
 # control system is used.
 
-PROJECT_NUMBER         = 2.17.1
+PROJECT_NUMBER         = 2.18.0
 
 # Using the PROJECT_BRIEF tag one can provide an optional one line description
 # for a project that appears at the top of each page and should give viewer a
diff --git a/src/stan/version.hpp b/src/stan/version.hpp
index ba275e71158..345396ed451 100644
--- a/src/stan/version.hpp
+++ b/src/stan/version.hpp
@@ -12,8 +12,8 @@
 #endif
 
 #define STAN_MAJOR 2
-#define STAN_MINOR 17
-#define STAN_PATCH 1
+#define STAN_MINOR 18
+#define STAN_PATCH 0
 
 namespace stan {
 
diff --git a/src/test/unit/version_test.cpp b/src/test/unit/version_test.cpp
index e5bb4a5169f..8aff9bf1317 100644
--- a/src/test/unit/version_test.cpp
+++ b/src/test/unit/version_test.cpp
@@ -3,12 +3,12 @@
 
 TEST(Stan, macro) {
   EXPECT_EQ(2, STAN_MAJOR);
-  EXPECT_EQ(17, STAN_MINOR);
-  EXPECT_EQ(1, STAN_PATCH);
+  EXPECT_EQ(18, STAN_MINOR);
+  EXPECT_EQ(0, STAN_PATCH);
 }
 
 TEST(Stan, version) {
   EXPECT_EQ("2", stan::MAJOR_VERSION);
-  EXPECT_EQ("17", stan::MINOR_VERSION);
-  EXPECT_EQ("1", stan::PATCH_VERSION);
+  EXPECT_EQ("18", stan::MINOR_VERSION);
+  EXPECT_EQ("0", stan::PATCH_VERSION);
 }