diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index c153d853e..3843579c1 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -2,6 +2,28 @@
 
 All notable changes to this project are documented in this file.
 
+## 1.9.6
+
+**Release date:** 2026-10-01
+
+This patch release normalizes Azure Blob listing ETags so that the listing digest
+stays consistent with the stored artifact revision and unchanged containers are no
+longer re-downloaded on every reconcile, and evicts stale Helm repository index
+entries from the cache so that repositories with frequently changing indexes no
+longer fail with "Cache is full".
+
+Fixes:
+- Normalize Azure listing ETags
+  [#2171](https://github.com/fluxcd/source-controller/pull/2171)
+- Evict stale Helm index entries from cache
+  [#2152](https://github.com/fluxcd/source-controller/pull/2152)
+
+Improvements:
+- Replace MinIO server with in-process S3 mock in tests
+  [#2153](https://github.com/fluxcd/source-controller/pull/2153)
+- Correct the shallow clone claim for commit plus branch in the GitRepository docs
+  [#2147](https://github.com/fluxcd/source-controller/pull/2147)
+
 ## 1.9.5
 
 **Release date:** 2026-08-31
diff --git a/config/manager/kustomization.yaml b/config/manager/kustomization.yaml
index a2961d745..bab74a352 100644
--- a/config/manager/kustomization.yaml
+++ b/config/manager/kustomization.yaml
@@ -6,4 +6,4 @@ resources:
 images:
 - name: fluxcd/source-controller
   newName: fluxcd/source-controller
-  newTag: v1.9.5
+  newTag: v1.9.6
diff --git a/go.mod b/go.mod
index acb70d6ed..64121cb84 100644
--- a/go.mod
+++ b/go.mod
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ require (
 	github.com/fluxcd/pkg/tar v1.2.0
 	github.com/fluxcd/pkg/testserver v0.14.0
 	github.com/fluxcd/pkg/version v0.16.0
-	github.com/fluxcd/source-controller/api v1.9.5
+	github.com/fluxcd/source-controller/api v1.9.6
 	github.com/go-git/go-billy/v5 v5.9.0
 	github.com/go-git/go-git/v5 v5.19.1
 	github.com/go-logr/logr v1.4.3