diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 8d4389f..73dcef0 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,3 +1,65 @@
+Overview of changes leading to 6.0.0
+Friday, December 16, 2022
+====================================
+- A new API have been added to pre-process the face and speed up future
+  subsetting operations on that face. Provides up to a 95% reduction in
+  subsetting times when the same face is subset more than once.
+
+  For more details and benchmarks, see:
+  https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/blob/main/docs/subset-preprocessing.md
+
+  (Garret Rieger, Behdad Esfahbod)
+
+- Shaping have been speedup by skipping entire lookups when the buffer contents
+  don't intersect with the lookup. Shows up to a 10% speedup in shaping some
+  fonts. (Behdad Esfahbod)
+
+- A new experimental feature, “Variable Composites” (enabled by passing
+  -Dexperimental_api=true to meson), is also featured in this release.
+  This technology enables drastic compression of fonts in the Chinese,
+  Japanese, Korean, and other writing systems, by reusing the OpenType Font
+  Variations technology for encoding “smart components” into the font.
+
+  The specification for these  extensions to the font format can be found in:
+  https://github.com/harfbuzz/boring-expansion-spec/blob/glyf1/glyf1.md
+
+  A test variable-font with ~7160 Hangul syllables derived from the
+  NotoSerifKR-VF font has been built, with existing OpenType technology, as
+  well as with the new Variable Composites (VarComposites) technology. The
+  VarComposites font is over 90% smaller than the OpenType version of the font!
+  Both fonts can be obtained from the “smarties” repository:
+  https://github.com/behdad/smarties/tree/3.0/fonts/hangul/serif
+
+  When building HarfBuzz with experimental features enabled, you can test
+  the “smarties” font with a sample character like this:
+
+  $ hb-view butchered-hangul-serif-smarties-variable.ttf -u AE01 --variations=wght=700
+
+  (Behdad Esfahbod)
+
+- The HarfBuzz subsetter can now drop axes by pinning them to specific values
+  (also referred to as instancing). There are a couple of restrictions
+  currently:
+
+  - Only works with TrueType (“glyf”) based fonts. “CFF2” fonts are not yet
+    supported.
+  - Only supports the case where all axes in a font are pinned.
+
+  (Garret Rieger, Qunxin Liu)
+
+- Miscellaneous fixes and improvements.
+
+  (Behdad Esfahbod, Christoph Reiter, David Corbett, Eli Schwartz, Garret
+   Rieger, Joel Auterson, Jordan Petridis, Khaled Hosny, Lorenz Wildberg,
+   Marco Rebhan, Martin Storsjö, Matthias Clasen, Qunxin Liu, Satadru Pramanik)
+
+
+- New API
++hb_subset_input_pin_axis_location()
++hb_subset_input_pin_axis_to_default()
++hb_subset_preprocess()
+
+
 Overview of changes leading to 5.3.1
 Wednesday, October 19, 2022
 ====================================
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index f2480c3..abe86ed 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 AC_PREREQ([2.64])
 AC_INIT([HarfBuzz],
-        [5.3.1],
+        [6.0.0],
         [https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues/new],
         [harfbuzz],
         [http://harfbuzz.org/])
diff --git a/docs/harfbuzz-docs.xml b/docs/harfbuzz-docs.xml
index 652a5e4..2d2827a 100644
--- a/docs/harfbuzz-docs.xml
+++ b/docs/harfbuzz-docs.xml
@@ -117,6 +117,7 @@
       <index id="api-index-full"><title>API Index</title><xi:include href="xml/api-index-full.xml"><xi:fallback /></xi:include></index>
       <index id="deprecated-api-index" role="deprecated"><title>Index of deprecated API</title><xi:include href="xml/api-index-deprecated.xml"><xi:fallback /></xi:include></index>
 
+      <index id="api-index-6-0-0" role="6.0.0"><title>Index of new symbols in 6.0.0</title><xi:include href="xml/api-index-6.0.0.xml"><xi:fallback /></xi:include></index>
       <index id="api-index-5-3-0" role="5.3.0"><title>Index of new symbols in 5.3.0</title><xi:include href="xml/api-index-5.3.0.xml"><xi:fallback /></xi:include></index>
       <index id="api-index-5-0-0" role="5.0.0"><title>Index of new symbols in 5.0.0</title><xi:include href="xml/api-index-5.0.0.xml"><xi:fallback /></xi:include></index>
       <index id="api-index-4-4-0" role="4.4.0"><title>Index of new symbols in 4.4.0</title><xi:include href="xml/api-index-4.4.0.xml"><xi:fallback /></xi:include></index>
diff --git a/meson.build b/meson.build
index 3391fc7..cc802f2 100644
--- a/meson.build
+++ b/meson.build
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 project('harfbuzz', 'c', 'cpp',
   meson_version: '>= 0.55.0',
-  version: '5.3.1',
+  version: '6.0.0',
   default_options: [
     'cpp_rtti=false',       # Just to support msvc, we are passing -fno-exceptions also anyway
     'cpp_std=c++11',
diff --git a/src/hb-subset-input.cc b/src/hb-subset-input.cc
index 38c38c1..42434ae 100644
--- a/src/hb-subset-input.cc
+++ b/src/hb-subset-input.cc
@@ -408,7 +408,7 @@
  *
  * Return value: `true` if success, `false` otherwise
  *
- * Since: REPLACEME
+ * Since: 6.0.0
  **/
 HB_EXTERN hb_bool_t
 hb_subset_input_pin_axis_to_default (hb_subset_input_t  *input,
@@ -435,7 +435,7 @@
  *
  * Return value: `true` if success, `false` otherwise
  *
- * Since: REPLACEME
+ * Since: 6.0.0
  **/
 HB_EXTERN hb_bool_t
 hb_subset_input_pin_axis_location (hb_subset_input_t  *input,
@@ -470,7 +470,7 @@
  *
  * Returns: a new #hb_face_t.
  *
- * Since: REPLACEME
+ * Since: 6.0.0
  **/
 
 HB_EXTERN hb_face_t *
diff --git a/src/hb-version.h b/src/hb-version.h
index 8d6ec66..1070262 100644
--- a/src/hb-version.h
+++ b/src/hb-version.h
@@ -41,26 +41,26 @@
  *
  * The major component of the library version available at compile-time.
  */
-#define HB_VERSION_MAJOR 5
+#define HB_VERSION_MAJOR 6
 /**
  * HB_VERSION_MINOR:
  *
  * The minor component of the library version available at compile-time.
  */
-#define HB_VERSION_MINOR 3
+#define HB_VERSION_MINOR 0
 /**
  * HB_VERSION_MICRO:
  *
  * The micro component of the library version available at compile-time.
  */
-#define HB_VERSION_MICRO 1
+#define HB_VERSION_MICRO 0
 
 /**
  * HB_VERSION_STRING:
  *
  * A string literal containing the library version available at compile-time.
  */
-#define HB_VERSION_STRING "5.3.1"
+#define HB_VERSION_STRING "6.0.0"
 
 /**
  * HB_VERSION_ATLEAST: