diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 0c47e1a..f24d315 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,5 +1,25 @@
 ## [Unreleased]
 
+### [1.8.0] - 2020-09-20 - [Janosch Müller](mailto:janosch84@gmail.com)
+
+### Changed
+
+- dropped support for running on Ruby 1.9.x
+
+### Added
+
+- regexp flags can now be passed when parsing a `String` as regexp body
+  * see the [README](/README.md#usage) for details
+  * thanks to [Owen Stephens](https://github.com/owst)
+- bare occurrences of `\g` and `\k` are now allowed and scanned as literal escapes
+  * matches Onigmo behavior
+  * thanks for the report to [Marc-André Lafortune](https://github.com/marcandre)
+
+### Fixed
+
+- fixed parsing comments without preceding space or trailing newline in x-mode
+  * thanks to [Owen Stephens](https://github.com/owst)
+
 ### [1.7.1] - 2020-06-07 - [Ammar Ali](mailto:ammarabuali@gmail.com)
 
 ### Fixed
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index bc7ad84..e65443b 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ A Ruby gem for tokenizing, parsing, and transforming regular expressions.
   * A scanner/tokenizer based on [Ragel](http://www.colm.net/open-source/ragel/)
   * A lexer that produces a "stream" of token objects.
   * A parser that produces a "tree" of Expression objects (OO API)
-* Runs on Ruby 1.9, 2.x, and JRuby (1.9 mode) runtimes.
+* Runs on Ruby 2.x and JRuby runtimes
 * Recognizes Ruby 1.8, 1.9, and 2.x regular expressions [See Supported Syntax](#supported-syntax)
 
 
diff --git a/lib/regexp_parser/version.rb b/lib/regexp_parser/version.rb
index 387a591..d82d57f 100644
--- a/lib/regexp_parser/version.rb
+++ b/lib/regexp_parser/version.rb
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 class Regexp
   class Parser
-    VERSION = '1.7.1'
+    VERSION = '1.8.0'
   end
 end