diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 842994cebd5..d4da99c5838 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,4 +1,91 @@
 
+<!-- 8.1.0-beta1 START -->
+
+# 8.1.0-beta1 (2021-07-22)
+
+### Features and enhancements
+
+* **Alerting:** Add Alertmanager notifications tab. [#35759](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35759), [@nathanrodman](https://github.com/nathanrodman)
+* **Alerting:** Add button to deactivate current Alertmanager configuration. [#36951](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36951), [@domasx2](https://github.com/domasx2)
+* **Alerting:** Add toggle in Loki/Prometheus data source configuration to opt out of alerting UI. [#36552](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36552), [@domasx2](https://github.com/domasx2)
+* **Alerting:** Allow any "evaluate for" value >=0 in the alert rule form. [#35807](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35807), [@domasx2](https://github.com/domasx2)
+* **Alerting:** Load default configuration from status endpoint, if Cortex Alertmanager returns empty user configuration. [#35769](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35769), [@domasx2](https://github.com/domasx2)
+* **Alerting:** view to display alert rule and its underlying data. [#35546](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35546), [@mckn](https://github.com/mckn)
+* **Annotation panel:** Release the annotation panel. [#36959](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36959), [@ryantxu](https://github.com/ryantxu)
+* **Annotations:** Add typeahead support for tags in built-in annotations. [#36377](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36377), [@ashharrison90](https://github.com/ashharrison90)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Add curated dashboards for Azure services. [#35356](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35356), [@avidhanju](https://github.com/avidhanju)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Add support for deep links to Microsoft Azure portal for Metrics. [#32273](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/32273), [@shuotli](https://github.com/shuotli)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Remove support for different credentials for Azure Monitor Logs. [#35121](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35121), [@andresmgot](https://github.com/andresmgot)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Support querying any Resource for Logs queries. [#33879](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/33879), [@joshhunt](https://github.com/joshhunt)
+* **Elasticsearch:** Add frozen indices search support. [#36018](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36018), [@Elfo404](https://github.com/Elfo404)
+* **Elasticsearch:** Name fields after template variables values instead of their name. [#36035](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36035), [@Elfo404](https://github.com/Elfo404)
+* **Elasticsearch:** add rate aggregation. [#33311](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/33311), [@estermv](https://github.com/estermv)
+* **Email:** Allow configuration of content types for email notifications. [#34530](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34530), [@djairhogeuens](https://github.com/djairhogeuens)
+* **Explore:** Add more meta information when line limit is hit. [#33069](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/33069), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Explore:** UI improvements to trace view. [#34276](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34276), [@aocenas](https://github.com/aocenas)
+* **FieldOverrides:** Added support to change display name in an override field and have it be matched by a later rule. [#35893](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35893), [@torkelo](https://github.com/torkelo)
+* **HTTP Client:** Introduce `dataproxy_max_idle_connections` config variable. [#35864](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35864), [@dsotirakis](https://github.com/dsotirakis)
+* **InfluxDB:** InfluxQL: adds tags to timeseries data. [#36702](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36702), [@gabor](https://github.com/gabor)
+* **InfluxDB:** InfluxQL: make measurement search case insensitive. [#34563](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34563), [@gabor](https://github.com/gabor)
+* **Legacy Alerting:** Replace simplejson with a struct in webhook notification channel. [#34952](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34952), [@KEVISONG](https://github.com/KEVISONG)
+* **Legend:** Updates display name for Last (not null) to just Last*. [#35633](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35633), [@torkelo](https://github.com/torkelo)
+* **Logs panel:** Add option to show common labels. [#36166](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36166), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Loki:** Add $__range variable. [#36175](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36175), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Loki:** Add support for "label_values(log stream selector, label)" in templating. [#35488](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35488), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Loki:** Add support for ad-hoc filtering in dashboard. [#36393](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36393), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **MySQL Datasource:** Add timezone parameter. [#27535](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/27535), [@andipabst](https://github.com/andipabst)
+* **NodeGraph:** Show gradient fields in legend. [#34078](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34078), [@aocenas](https://github.com/aocenas)
+* **PanelOptions:** Don't mutate panel options/field config object when updating. [#36441](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36441), [@dprokop](https://github.com/dprokop)
+* **PieChart:** Make pie gradient more subtle to match other charts. [#36961](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36961), [@nikki-kiga](https://github.com/nikki-kiga)
+* **Prometheus:** Update PromQL typeahead and highlighting. [#36730](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36730), [@ekpdt](https://github.com/ekpdt)
+* **Prometheus:** interpolate variable for step field. [#36437](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36437), [@zoltanbedi](https://github.com/zoltanbedi)
+* **Provisioning:** Improve validation by validating across all dashboard providers. [#26742](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/26742), [@nabokihms](https://github.com/nabokihms)
+* **SQL Datasources:** Allow multiple string/labels columns with time series. [#36485](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36485), [@kylebrandt](https://github.com/kylebrandt)
+* **Select:** Portal select menu to document.body. [#36398](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36398), [@ashharrison90](https://github.com/ashharrison90)
+* **Team Sync:** Add group mapping to support team sync in the Generic OAuth provider. [#36307](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36307), [@wardbekker](https://github.com/wardbekker)
+* **Tooltip:** Make active series more noticeable. [#36824](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36824), [@nikki-kiga](https://github.com/nikki-kiga)
+* **Tracing:** Add support to configure trace to logs start and end time. [#34995](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34995), [@zoltanbedi](https://github.com/zoltanbedi)
+* **Transformations:** Skip merge when there is only a single data frame. [#36407](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36407), [@edgarpoce](https://github.com/edgarpoce)
+* **ValueMapping:** Added support for mapping text to color, boolean values, NaN and Null. Improved UI for value mapping. [#33820](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/33820), [@torkelo](https://github.com/torkelo)
+* **Visualizations:** Dynamically set any config (min, max, unit, color, thresholds) from query results. [#36548](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36548), [@torkelo](https://github.com/torkelo)
+* **live:** Add support to handle origin without a value for the port when matching with root_url. [#36834](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36834), [@FZambia](https://github.com/FZambia)
+
+### Bug fixes
+
+* **Alerting:** Handle marshaling Inf values. [#36947](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36947), [@kylebrandt](https://github.com/kylebrandt)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Fix macro resolution for template variables. [#36944](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36944), [@andresmgot](https://github.com/andresmgot)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Fix queries with Microsoft.NetApp/../../volumes resources. [#32661](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/32661), [@pckls](https://github.com/pckls)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Request and concat subsequent resource pages. [#36958](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36958), [@andresmgot](https://github.com/andresmgot)
+* **Bug:** Fix parse duration for day. [#36942](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36942), [@idafurjes](https://github.com/idafurjes)
+* **Datasources:** Improve error handling for error messages. [#35120](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35120), [@ifrost](https://github.com/ifrost)
+* **Explore:** Correct the functionality of shift-enter shortcut across all uses. [#36600](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36600), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Explore:** Show all dataFrames in data tab in Inspector. [#32161](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/32161), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **GraphNG:** Fix Tooltip mode 'All' for XYChart. [#31260](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/31260), [@Posnet](https://github.com/Posnet)
+* **Loki:** Fix highlight of logs when using filter expressions with backticks. [#36024](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36024), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Modal:** Force modal content to overflow with scroll. [#36754](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36754), [@ashharrison90](https://github.com/ashharrison90)
+* **Plugins:** Ignore symlinked folders when verifying plugin signature. [#34434](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34434), [@wbrowne](https://github.com/wbrowne)
+
+### Breaking changes
+
+
+When parsing Elasticsearch query responses using template variables, each field gets named after the variable value instead of the name.
+For example, executing a `terms` aggregation on a variable named `$groupBy` that has `@hostname` as a value, the resulting column in the table response will be `@hostname` instead of `$groupBy` Issue [#36035](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/issues/36035)
+
+
+Azure Monitor data source no longer supports different credentials for Metrics and Logs in existing data sources. To use different credentials for Azure Monitor Logs, create another data source. Issue [#35121](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/issues/35121)
+
+Existing Azure Metrics Logs queries for Log Analytics Workspaces should be backward compatible with this change and should not get impacted. Panels will be migrated to use the new resource-centric backend when you first edit and save them.
+
+Application Insights and Insights Analytics queries are now read-only and cannot be modified. To update Application Insights queries, users can manually recreate them as Metrics queries, and Insights Analytics are recreated with Logs.
+
+ Issue [#33879](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/issues/33879)
+
+### Plugin development fixes & changes
+
+* **Toolkit:** Improve error messages when tasks fail. [#36381](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36381), [@joshhunt](https://github.com/joshhunt)
+
+<!-- 8.1.0-beta1 END -->
+
 <!-- 8.0.6 START -->
 
 # 8.0.6 (2021-07-14)
diff --git a/docs/sources/release-notes/release-notes-8-1-0-beta1.md b/docs/sources/release-notes/release-notes-8-1-0-beta1.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..01fc656f458
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/sources/release-notes/release-notes-8-1-0-beta1.md
@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
++++
+title = "Release notes for Grafana 8.1.0-beta1"
+[_build]
+list = false
++++
+
+<!-- Auto generated by update changelog github action -->
+
+# Release notes for Grafana 8.1.0-beta1
+
+### Features and enhancements
+
+* **Alerting:** Add Alertmanager notifications tab. [#35759](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35759), [@nathanrodman](https://github.com/nathanrodman)
+* **Alerting:** Add button to deactivate current Alertmanager configuration. [#36951](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36951), [@domasx2](https://github.com/domasx2)
+* **Alerting:** Add toggle in Loki/Prometheus data source configuration to opt out of alerting UI. [#36552](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36552), [@domasx2](https://github.com/domasx2)
+* **Alerting:** Allow any "evaluate for" value >=0 in the alert rule form. [#35807](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35807), [@domasx2](https://github.com/domasx2)
+* **Alerting:** Load default configuration from status endpoint, if Cortex Alertmanager returns empty user configuration. [#35769](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35769), [@domasx2](https://github.com/domasx2)
+* **Alerting:** view to display alert rule and its underlying data. [#35546](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35546), [@mckn](https://github.com/mckn)
+* **Annotation panel:** Release the annotation panel. [#36959](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36959), [@ryantxu](https://github.com/ryantxu)
+* **Annotations:** Add typeahead support for tags in built-in annotations. [#36377](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36377), [@ashharrison90](https://github.com/ashharrison90)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Add curated dashboards for Azure services. [#35356](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35356), [@avidhanju](https://github.com/avidhanju)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Add support for deep links to Microsoft Azure portal for Metrics. [#32273](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/32273), [@shuotli](https://github.com/shuotli)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Remove support for different credentials for Azure Monitor Logs. [#35121](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35121), [@andresmgot](https://github.com/andresmgot)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Support querying any Resource for Logs queries. [#33879](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/33879), [@joshhunt](https://github.com/joshhunt)
+* **Elasticsearch:** Add frozen indices search support. [#36018](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36018), [@Elfo404](https://github.com/Elfo404)
+* **Elasticsearch:** Name fields after template variables values instead of their name. [#36035](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36035), [@Elfo404](https://github.com/Elfo404)
+* **Elasticsearch:** add rate aggregation. [#33311](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/33311), [@estermv](https://github.com/estermv)
+* **Email:** Allow configuration of content types for email notifications. [#34530](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34530), [@djairhogeuens](https://github.com/djairhogeuens)
+* **Explore:** Add more meta information when line limit is hit. [#33069](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/33069), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Explore:** UI improvements to trace view. [#34276](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34276), [@aocenas](https://github.com/aocenas)
+* **FieldOverrides:** Added support to change display name in an override field and have it be matched by a later rule. [#35893](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35893), [@torkelo](https://github.com/torkelo)
+* **HTTP Client:** Introduce `dataproxy_max_idle_connections` config variable. [#35864](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35864), [@dsotirakis](https://github.com/dsotirakis)
+* **InfluxDB:** InfluxQL: adds tags to timeseries data. [#36702](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36702), [@gabor](https://github.com/gabor)
+* **InfluxDB:** InfluxQL: make measurement search case insensitive. [#34563](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34563), [@gabor](https://github.com/gabor)
+* **Legacy Alerting:** Replace simplejson with a struct in webhook notification channel. [#34952](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34952), [@KEVISONG](https://github.com/KEVISONG)
+* **Legend:** Updates display name for Last (not null) to just Last*. [#35633](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35633), [@torkelo](https://github.com/torkelo)
+* **Logs panel:** Add option to show common labels. [#36166](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36166), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Loki:** Add $__range variable. [#36175](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36175), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Loki:** Add support for "label_values(log stream selector, label)" in templating. [#35488](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35488), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Loki:** Add support for ad-hoc filtering in dashboard. [#36393](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36393), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **MySQL Datasource:** Add timezone parameter. [#27535](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/27535), [@andipabst](https://github.com/andipabst)
+* **NodeGraph:** Show gradient fields in legend. [#34078](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34078), [@aocenas](https://github.com/aocenas)
+* **PanelOptions:** Don't mutate panel options/field config object when updating. [#36441](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36441), [@dprokop](https://github.com/dprokop)
+* **PieChart:** Make pie gradient more subtle to match other charts. [#36961](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36961), [@nikki-kiga](https://github.com/nikki-kiga)
+* **Prometheus:** Update PromQL typeahead and highlighting. [#36730](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36730), [@ekpdt](https://github.com/ekpdt)
+* **Prometheus:** interpolate variable for step field. [#36437](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36437), [@zoltanbedi](https://github.com/zoltanbedi)
+* **Provisioning:** Improve validation by validating across all dashboard providers. [#26742](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/26742), [@nabokihms](https://github.com/nabokihms)
+* **SQL Datasources:** Allow multiple string/labels columns with time series. [#36485](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36485), [@kylebrandt](https://github.com/kylebrandt)
+* **Select:** Portal select menu to document.body. [#36398](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36398), [@ashharrison90](https://github.com/ashharrison90)
+* **Team Sync:** Add group mapping to support team sync in the Generic OAuth provider. [#36307](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36307), [@wardbekker](https://github.com/wardbekker)
+* **Tooltip:** Make active series more noticeable. [#36824](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36824), [@nikki-kiga](https://github.com/nikki-kiga)
+* **Tracing:** Add support to configure trace to logs start and end time. [#34995](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34995), [@zoltanbedi](https://github.com/zoltanbedi)
+* **Transformations:** Skip merge when there is only a single data frame. [#36407](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36407), [@edgarpoce](https://github.com/edgarpoce)
+* **ValueMapping:** Added support for mapping text to color, boolean values, NaN and Null. Improved UI for value mapping. [#33820](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/33820), [@torkelo](https://github.com/torkelo)
+* **Visualizations:** Dynamically set any config (min, max, unit, color, thresholds) from query results. [#36548](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36548), [@torkelo](https://github.com/torkelo)
+* **live:** Add support to handle origin without a value for the port when matching with root_url. [#36834](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36834), [@FZambia](https://github.com/FZambia)
+
+### Bug fixes
+
+* **Alerting:** Handle marshaling Inf values. [#36947](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36947), [@kylebrandt](https://github.com/kylebrandt)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Fix macro resolution for template variables. [#36944](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36944), [@andresmgot](https://github.com/andresmgot)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Fix queries with Microsoft.NetApp/../../volumes resources. [#32661](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/32661), [@pckls](https://github.com/pckls)
+* **AzureMonitor:** Request and concat subsequent resource pages. [#36958](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36958), [@andresmgot](https://github.com/andresmgot)
+* **Bug:** Fix parse duration for day. [#36942](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36942), [@idafurjes](https://github.com/idafurjes)
+* **Datasources:** Improve error handling for error messages. [#35120](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/35120), [@ifrost](https://github.com/ifrost)
+* **Explore:** Correct the functionality of shift-enter shortcut across all uses. [#36600](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36600), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Explore:** Show all dataFrames in data tab in Inspector. [#32161](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/32161), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **GraphNG:** Fix Tooltip mode 'All' for XYChart. [#31260](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/31260), [@Posnet](https://github.com/Posnet)
+* **Loki:** Fix highlight of logs when using filter expressions with backticks. [#36024](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36024), [@ivanahuckova](https://github.com/ivanahuckova)
+* **Modal:** Force modal content to overflow with scroll. [#36754](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36754), [@ashharrison90](https://github.com/ashharrison90)
+* **Plugins:** Ignore symlinked folders when verifying plugin signature. [#34434](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/34434), [@wbrowne](https://github.com/wbrowne)
+
+### Breaking changes
+
+
+When parsing Elasticsearch query responses using template variables, each field gets named after the variable value instead of the name.
+For example, executing a `terms` aggregation on a variable named `$groupBy` that has `@hostname` as a value, the resulting column in the table response will be `@hostname` instead of `$groupBy` Issue [#36035](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/issues/36035)
+
+
+Azure Monitor data source no longer supports different credentials for Metrics and Logs in existing data sources. To use different credentials for Azure Monitor Logs, create another data source. Issue [#35121](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/issues/35121)
+
+Existing Azure Metrics Logs queries for Log Analytics Workspaces should be backward compatible with this change and should not get impacted. Panels will be migrated to use the new resource-centric backend when you first edit and save them.
+
+Application Insights and Insights Analytics queries are now read-only and cannot be modified. To update Application Insights queries, users can manually recreate them as Metrics queries, and Insights Analytics are recreated with Logs.
+
+ Issue [#33879](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/issues/33879)
+
+### Plugin development fixes & changes
+
+* **Toolkit:** Improve error messages when tasks fail. [#36381](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/pull/36381), [@joshhunt](https://github.com/joshhunt)
+