draft changelog (#20497)

* draft changelog

* remove new contrib

* prettier

* updates

* update

* Revise CHANGELOG for version updates and fixes

Updated CHANGELOG with new entries and fixes.

---------

Co-authored-by: Earle Lowe <30607889+emlowe@users.noreply.github.com>

Author: wjblanke

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -6,6 +6,57 @@ The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/),
 and this project does not yet adhere to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html)
 for setuptools_scm/PEP 440 reasons.
 
+## 2.6.0 Chia blockchain 2026-2-11
+
+As this is a soft fork release, upgrading is strongly recommended before height 8,655,000.
+
+## What's Changed
+
+### Added
+
+- Update error message for invalid IP and port format to clarify ipv6
+- Work in Progress - increased preliminary support for V2 plot format
+- Python 3.13 support
+- Do not advertise a new transaction with zero cost
+
+### Changed
+
+- Bump chia_rs to 0.35.2
+- Bump chiavdf from 1.1.13 to 1.1.14
+- Bump chiabip158 from 1.5.3 to 1.5.4
+- Bump chiapos from 2.0.11 to 2.0.12
+- Skip fetching additions and removals for non transaction blocks in FullNodeAPI's request_header_blocks
+- Tolerate quote related cost mismatch for older nodes
+- Use an adapted version of deficit round robin algorithm in TransactionQueue's pop
+- Prioritize trusted peers in FullNodeAPI's send_transaction
+- Make sure the costs and fees match when a peer notifies us of a new transaction that we saw already
+- Remove unnecessary private key access from `get_public_keys`
+- Set minimum to TLSv1.3
+- Make sure the fee and cost specified in a NewTransaction match the ones from validating its spend bundle
+- Change v1 plot phase-out
+- Simplify tx_request_and_timeout and make it iterate over a dynamic list of peers with transactions
+- Improve v2-plot support in plot-sync
+- Don't allow, or harvest, v2 plots before hard fork activation
+- Change Chia Root CA to expire 31 Dec 2037
+- Default to single solver thread
+- Relax PoS validation in weight proofs
+- Advertise requested mempool transactions instead of sending them
+- In TransactionQueue, prioritize peer queue transactions by fee per cost
+- Eliminate rate limits and bans for exempt peer networks
+- Updated GUI translations
+
+### Fixed
+
+- Fix RPC key deletion endpoints to actually delete intended DBs
+- Fix some typos in comments by @rocksload
+- Some minor issues in comment by @deepdring
+- Fix a large number of spelling issues in comments by @joemicky
+- Fix typo for Timelord.\_check_for_new_sp comments by @wanziforever
+- Change GetTransactions to use uint32 to support wallets with very large numbers of transactions
+- Fix measurement of harvester lookup times for logging
+- Fixed NFT minting RPC parameter (fixes #20360)
+- Fixed CAT names on overview (fixes #20297)
+
 ## 2.5.7 Chia blockchain 2025-11-12
 
 ## What's Changed