diff --git a/VERSION.txt b/VERSION.txt
index d2457a05a09..a15be0dd5ca 100644
--- a/VERSION.txt
+++ b/VERSION.txt
@@ -1 +1 @@
-SageMath version 8.1.rc4, Release Date: 2017-12-02
+SageMath version 8.1, Release Date: 2017-12-07
diff --git a/build/pkgs/configure/checksums.ini b/build/pkgs/configure/checksums.ini
index 4910cda3150..dad6cc00da7 100644
--- a/build/pkgs/configure/checksums.ini
+++ b/build/pkgs/configure/checksums.ini
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
 tarball=configure-VERSION.tar.gz
-sha1=41e385a7d184a23310bb65767107404b93355232
-md5=6fad8862cab48e135446e11388389a5c
-cksum=3388483909
+sha1=e383363ae5a77800447357b2aa5a133dbadb9875
+md5=fb8e153edca3331e1700284d5c68d9b4
+cksum=2589030551
diff --git a/build/pkgs/configure/package-version.txt b/build/pkgs/configure/package-version.txt
index 5d165ff2850..e06108c0fa1 100644
--- a/build/pkgs/configure/package-version.txt
+++ b/build/pkgs/configure/package-version.txt
@@ -1 +1 @@
-246
+247
diff --git a/src/bin/sage-banner b/src/bin/sage-banner
index 5a64d8dc2d0..9b17c4418a5 100644
--- a/src/bin/sage-banner
+++ b/src/bin/sage-banner
@@ -1,8 +1,5 @@
 ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
-│ SageMath version 8.1.rc4, Release Date: 2017-12-02                 │
+│ SageMath version 8.1, Release Date: 2017-12-07                     │
 │ Type "notebook()" for the browser-based notebook interface.        │
 │ Type "help()" for help.                                            │
 └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
-┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
-┃ Warning: this is a prerelease version, and it may be unstable.     ┃
-┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
diff --git a/src/bin/sage-version.sh b/src/bin/sage-version.sh
index 56d0e84d39c..f8a1969fd88 100644
--- a/src/bin/sage-version.sh
+++ b/src/bin/sage-version.sh
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
 # Sage version information for shell scripts
 # This file is auto-generated by the sage-update-version script, do not edit!
-SAGE_VERSION='8.1.rc4'
-SAGE_RELEASE_DATE='2017-12-02'
+SAGE_VERSION='8.1'
+SAGE_RELEASE_DATE='2017-12-07'
diff --git a/src/sage/version.py b/src/sage/version.py
index 7e8b3c6e392..8baa0aaa5f1 100644
--- a/src/sage/version.py
+++ b/src/sage/version.py
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
 # Sage version information for Python scripts
 # This file is auto-generated by the sage-update-version script, do not edit!
-version = '8.1.rc4'
-date = '2017-12-02'
+version = '8.1'
+date = '2017-12-07'