An Announcement (ANN) is a Usenet, Mailing list, or E-mail message sent to notify subscribers that a software project has made a new software release version. Newsgroup announcement recipients often have a name like "comp.somegroup.announce". Mailing list announcement recipients often have a name like "toolname-announce". Most software projects that make announcements are open source.

In an announcement the subject line commonly contains the abbreviated prefix ANN:.

The contents of an announcement usually contain a title line which contains the tool name, version, release name, and date. Additional contents often fall into the following message sections:

• About - a short paragraph summary of the tool's purpose
• Changes - a list of the highest impact changes since the last release (should be brief since the changelog comprises the definitive list)
• Resources - links to project pages of interest, such as homepage, where to download, bug tracker, etc.