diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index a917490d..e700d5fc 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -2,6 +2,27 @@
 
 Sandia OpenSHMEM NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
 
+v1.5.3rc1
+---------
+- Added several enhancements to better support SOS as a backend for Intel® SHMEM.
+- Added extension support for GPU RDMA and external heap creation.
+- Added support for multi-NIC configurations via libfabric. The feature is
+  enabled by default. It can be disabled with the environment variable,
+  SHMEM_OFI_DISABLE_MULTIRAIL=1.
+- Added initial support for multi-NIC topology optimizations via hwloc.
+  Detection of hwloc is enabled by default. It can be disabled with the
+  configuration flag, --without-hwloc.
+- Moved the "tests-sos" package of unit tests and performance benchmarks to a
+  new Git submodule hosted at https://github.com/openshmem-org/tests-sos.
+- Added shmemx_ibput and shmemx_ibget as extension APIs.
+- Added shmemx_signal_add and shmemx_signal_set as extension APIs.
+- Added several configuration flags to optimize for the CXI libfabric provider:
+  --enable-ofi-inject and --enable-nonfetch-amo, which are enabled by default.
+- Manpage generation is now disabled by default to shorten build times. It can
+  be re-enabled during configuration with the --enable-manpages flag.
+- Included multiple bugfixes, including in teams configuration,
+  remote-virtual-addressing checks, buffer argument overlap checks, and more.
+
 v1.5.2
 ------
 - This full release includes the changes listed below for v1.5.2rc1 and the
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index 10198b96..6c99d376 100755
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
 
 dnl Init Autoconf/Automake/Libtool
 
-AC_INIT([Sandia OpenSHMEM], [1.5.2], [https://github.com/Sandia-OpenSHMEM/SOS/issues], [sandia-openshmem], [https://github.com/Sandia-OpenSHMEM/SOS])
+AC_INIT([Sandia OpenSHMEM], [1.5.3rc1], [https://github.com/Sandia-OpenSHMEM/SOS/issues], [sandia-openshmem], [https://github.com/Sandia-OpenSHMEM/SOS])
 AC_PREREQ([2.60])
 AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR([config])
 AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR([config])