diff --git a/.release-please-manifest.json b/.release-please-manifest.json
index 928eee2e123e3..86dc4d17656aa 100644
--- a/.release-please-manifest.json
+++ b/.release-please-manifest.json
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 {
-  ".": "2.9.4"
+  ".": "2.9.6"
 }
diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 3ff3d00daed5e..16fee81e149cb 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -97,6 +97,17 @@
 * [10301](https://github.com/grafana/loki/pull/10301) **wildum**: users can now define `additional_fields` in cloudflare configuration.
 * [10755](https://github.com/grafana/loki/pull/10755) **hainenber**: Lambda-Promtail: Add support for dropping labels passed via env var
 
+## [2.9.6](https://github.com/grafana/loki/compare/v2.9.5...v2.9.6) (2024-03-21)
+
+
+### Bug Fixes
+
+* promtail failures connecting to local loki installation [release-2.9.x]  ([#12184](https://github.com/grafana/loki/issues/12184)) ([8585e35](https://github.com/grafana/loki/commit/8585e3537375c0deb11462d7256f5da23228f5e1))
+* **release-2.9.x:** frontend: Use `net.JoinHostPort` to support IPv6 addresses ([#10650](https://github.com/grafana/loki/issues/10650)) ([#11870](https://github.com/grafana/loki/issues/11870)) ([7def3b4](https://github.com/grafana/loki/commit/7def3b4e774252e13ba154ca13f72816a84da7dd))
+* update google.golang.org/protobuf to v1.33.0 ([#12269](https://github.com/grafana/loki/issues/12269)) ([#12287](https://github.com/grafana/loki/issues/12287)) ([3186520](https://github.com/grafana/loki/commit/318652035059fdaa40405f263fc9e37b4d38b157))
+
+## [2.9.5](https://github.com/grafana/loki/compare/v2.9.4...v2.9.5) (2024-02-28)
+
 ##### Changes
 
 * [10677](https://github.com/grafana/loki/pull/10677) **chaudum** Remove deprecated `stream_lag_labels` setting from both the `options` and `client` configuration sections.
diff --git a/cmd/lokitool/lokitool b/cmd/lokitool/lokitool
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000000..71840811796eb
Binary files /dev/null and b/cmd/lokitool/lokitool differ