diff --git a/.mailmap b/.mailmap
index 860654ac7781..2464a60aa5af 100644
--- a/.mailmap
+++ b/.mailmap
@@ -108,6 +108,7 @@ Tõnis Tiigi <tonistiigi@gmail.com>
 Wade Lee <weidonglee27@gmail.com>
 Wade Lee <weidonglee27@gmail.com> <weidonglee29@gmail.com>
 Wade Lee <weidonglee27@gmail.com> <21621232@zju.edu.cn>
+wanglei <wllenyj@linux.alibaba.com>
 Wei Fu <fuweid89@gmail.com>
 Wei Fu <fuweid89@gmail.com> <fhfuwei@163.com>
 Xiaodong Zhang <a4012017@sina.com>
diff --git a/releases/v1.5.6.toml b/releases/v1.5.6.toml
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..3cbe8de425de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/releases/v1.5.6.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+# commit to be tagged for new release
+commit = "HEAD"
+
+project_name = "containerd"
+github_repo = "containerd/containerd"
+match_deps = "^github.com/(containerd/[a-zA-Z0-9-]+)$"
+
+# previous release
+previous = "v1.5.5"
+
+pre_release = false
+
+preface = """\
+The sixth patch release for containerd 1.5 contains minor fixes and updates
+including an updated runc and hcsshim.
+
+### Notable Updates
+
+* **Install apparmor parser for arm64 and update seccomp to 2.5.1** [#5763](https://github.com/containerd/containerd/pull/5763)
+* **Update runc binary to 1.0.2** [#5899](https://github.com/containerd/containerd/pull/5899)
+* **Update hcsshim to v0.8.21 to fix layer issue on Windows Server 2019** [#5942](https://github.com/containerd/containerd/pull/5942)
+* **Add support for 'clone3' syscall to fix issue with certain images when seccomp is enabled** [#5982](https://github.com/containerd/containerd/pull/5982)
+* **Add image config labels in CRI container creation** [#6012](https://github.com/containerd/containerd/pull/6012)
+* **Fix panic in metadata content writer on copy error** [#6043](https://github.com/containerd/containerd/pull/6043)
+
+See the changelog for complete list of changes"""
diff --git a/version/version.go b/version/version.go
index 9b53cb13e97e..dfb7827475f8 100644
--- a/version/version.go
+++ b/version/version.go
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ var (
 	Package = "github.com/containerd/containerd"
 
 	// Version holds the complete version number. Filled in at linking time.
-	Version = "1.5.5+unknown"
+	Version = "1.5.6+unknown"
 
 	// Revision is filled with the VCS (e.g. git) revision being used to build
 	// the program at linking time.