diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index fecc11efbaf5ac015348c506a24ea84af3a5f4a9..7d8c8807c954da6070db8da03289bbc66051f1f3 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2017 September 2nd - Pitivi 0.99
+
+  * Many performance improvements
+  * Lots of bug fixing
+
 2016 December 5th - Pitivi 0.98
 
   * Customizable keyboard shortcuts
diff --git a/RELEASE b/RELEASE
index 2ebbc589060ec9c2a46935123c30239e9a057017..69e357c0335fbd95df5cba4d367f60e99d1e182a 100644
--- a/RELEASE
+++ b/RELEASE
@@ -1,52 +1,64 @@
-0.98 Release
-------------
+0.99 Release "Ocean Big Chair"
+------------------------------
 
-This is the eighth release for the new version of Pitivi based on GES,
-the GStreamer Editing Services library. This is mainly a bug-fix release.
+This is the ninth release for the new version of Pitivi based on GES,
+the GStreamer Editing Services library. This is a bug-fix release, and
+can be considered a release candidate for version 1.0.
 
-Users can now customize the keyboard shortcuts.
+Many performance improvements have been made, and many bugs have been fixed.
 
 
 == Requirements ==
 
-For this release, we depend on GStreamer, Gst-Python, GES 1.10.2.
+For this release, we depend on GStreamer, Gst-Python, GES 1.12.3.
 
-The gnome-desktop optional dependency is not used anymore.
+We now use Gnome GSound instead of pycanberra.
 
-We now use nose2 instead of nosetests for "make check".
+We now depend on gst-devtools for tests.
+
+We got rid of `configure` and `Makefile`, and now rely on Meson and Ninja.
+See http://mesonbuild.com/Quick-guide.html for an intro.
 
 Refer to Pitivi's check.py for the dependencies' versions for this release.
-See also http://wiki.pitivi.org/wiki/Dependencies for additional tips.
 
 
 == Contributors for this release ==
 
-   152  Alexandru Băluț
-    19  Thibault Saunier
-     2  Jakub Brindza
-     1  Piotr Drąg
-     1  Sebastian Dröge
+   104  Thibault Saunier
+    78  Alexandru Băluț
+    14  Stefan Popa
+    14  Suhas Nayak
+     4  Naman Yadav
+     3  Fabian Orccon
+     2  Shivam Tripathi
+     2  Umang Jain
+     1  Aswin Mohan
+     1  Dan Muntean
+     1  Igor Gnatenko
+     1  Michael Sheldon
+     1  Rodolfo Ribeiro Gomes
+     1  dg1727
 
 Translations:
     ca  Jordi Mas
-    cs  Marek Černocký
-    de  Mario Blättermann
+    da  Alan Mortensen
+    de  Mario Blättermann, Wolfgang Stöggl
     es  Daniel Mustieles
-    fr  Claude Paroz
-    hu  Balázs Meskó
+    hu  Gábor Kelemen
+    id  Andika Triwidada
     lt  Aurimas Černius
     pl  Piotr Drąg
- pt_BR  Rafael Fontenelle
-    pt  Tiago Santos
+ pt_BR  Rafael Fontenelle, Enrico Nicoletto
     sk  Dušan Kazik
     sr  Мирослав Николић
+    sv  Josef Andersson, Anders Jonsson
     uk  Daniel Korostil
 
 
 == Download ==
 
   Pitivi source tarballs are available on the GNOME FTP servers:
-    http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/pitivi/0.98
+    http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/pitivi/0.99
 
   See the website for the official build based on flatpak.
 
@@ -60,4 +72,4 @@ Translations:
 
 == Bugs Fixed ==
 
-See https://phabricator.freedesktop.org/project/board/108/query/all/
+See https://phabricator.freedesktop.org/project/board/110/query/all/
diff --git a/meson.build b/meson.build
index 5fcc3677b57bcc66664da87780afd142acbac996..a9e2c1f80ab533187975243d60180c0084766285 100644
--- a/meson.build
+++ b/meson.build
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-project('pitivi', 'c', version : '0.98', meson_version : '>= 0.41.0')
+project('pitivi', 'c', version : '0.99', meson_version : '>= 0.41.0')
 
 python = find_program('python3')
 intltool_merge = find_program('intltool-merge')
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ itstool = find_program('itstool')
 msgfmt = find_program('msgfmt')
 
 python_dep = dependency('python3', version : '>= 3.3')
-gst_dep = dependency('gstreamer-1.0', version : '>= 1.12.2')
+gst_dep = dependency('gstreamer-1.0', version : '>= 1.12.3')
 cairo_dep = dependency('cairo')
 pycairo_dep = dependency('py3cairo')
 
diff --git a/pitivi/check.py b/pitivi/check.py
index 4ff913ebcd09bf4a4fc593ffbdcc9400cab7f357..436299a158957d2f76a72455743f7135386b2b49 100644
--- a/pitivi/check.py
+++ b/pitivi/check.py
@@ -387,7 +387,7 @@ def initialize_modules():
 # a specific version requirement, they have the "None" value.
 
 GST_API_VERSION = "1.0"
-GST_VERSION = "1.12.2"
+GST_VERSION = "1.12.3"
 GTK_API_VERSION = "3.0"
 GLIB_API_VERSION = "2.0"
 HARD_DEPENDENCIES = [GICheck("3.20.0"),