diff --git a/docs/relnotes-8.1.html b/docs/relnotes-8.1.html
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..d435f5e3745
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
+  <title>Mesa Release Notes</title>
+  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mesa.css">
+</head>
+<body>
+
+<h1>Mesa 8.1 Release Notes / date TBD</h1>
+
+<p>
+Mesa 8.1 is a new development release.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mesa 8.1 implements the OpenGL 3.0 API, but the version reported by
+glGetString(GL_VERSION) depends on the particular driver being used.
+Some drivers don't support all the features required in OpenGL 3.0.
+</p>
+
+
+<h2>MD5 checksums</h2>
+<pre>
+tbd
+</pre>
+
+
+<h2>New features</h2>
+
+<p>
+Note: some of the new features are only available with certain drivers.
+</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>GL_ARB_base_instance extension</li>
+<li>GL_NV_read_buffer extension for ES 2.0</li>
+<li>GL_ARB_shader_bit_encoding</li>
+<li>GL_EXT_unpack_subimage for ES 2.0</li>
+<li>GL_EXT_read_format_bgra for ES 1.1 and 2.0</li>
+<li>GL_ARB_debug_output</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<h2>Bug fixes</h2>
+
+<p>TBD -- This list is likely incomplete.</p>
+
+
+<h2>Changes</h2>
+
+<p>TBD</p>
+
+
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/docs/relnotes.html b/docs/relnotes.html
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--- a/docs/relnotes.html
+++ b/docs/relnotes.html
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ The release notes summarize what's new or changed in each Mesa release.
 </p>
 
 <ul>
+<li><a href="relnotes-8.1.html">8.1 release notes</a>
 <li><a href="relnotes-8.0.3.html">8.0.3 release notes</a>
 <li><a href="relnotes-8.0.2.html">8.0.2 release notes</a>
 <li><a href="relnotes-8.0.1.html">8.0.1 release notes</a>
