diff --git a/.github/workflows/release-drafter.yaml b/.github/workflows/release-drafter.yaml
index 1901afcea..607cf7613 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/release-drafter.yaml
+++ b/.github/workflows/release-drafter.yaml
@@ -3,7 +3,10 @@ name: Release Drafter
 on:
   push:
     branches:
-      - releases/*
+      # we only want to draft release notes for the base version,
+      # e.g. for releases/v0.18, we draft v0.18.0 for all RCs
+      # this means that we explicitly don't want to draft release notes for releases/v0.18.0 or releases/v0.18.1
+      - 'releases/v[0-9]+.[0-9]+'
 
 permissions:
   contents: read
diff --git a/.github/workflows/release.yaml b/.github/workflows/release.yaml
index 5abef6913..507ac7cbc 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/release.yaml
+++ b/.github/workflows/release.yaml
@@ -160,7 +160,8 @@ jobs:
         git commit -m "Release $RELEASE_VERSION"
         msg="Release ${{ env.RELEASE_VERSION }}"
         git tag --annotate --message "${msg}" ${{ env.RELEASE_VERSION }}
-        git push origin ${{ env.RELEASE_VERSION }}
+        # push both the tag as well as a release branch with that tag.
+        git push origin releases/${{ env.RELEASE_VERSION }} ${{ env.RELEASE_VERSION }}
 
     - name: Create GPG Token file from Secret
       run: |