diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 77f2eaed3..a49c6efde 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,7 +1,9 @@
 # devtools 1.13.3.9000
 
+* The CRAN-RELEASE file is now added to .Rbuildignore (#1711)
+
 * The `lang` argument to `spell_check()` was removed, for compatibility with
-  [spelling](https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=spelling) v1.1.
+  [spelling](https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=spelling) v1.1. (#1715)
 
 * `check()` and `check_built()` now have an `error_on` argument to specify if
   they should throw an error on check failures. When run non-interactively this
diff --git a/R/release.r b/R/release.r
index dc3dacd35..b6e21b3e9 100644
--- a/R/release.r
+++ b/R/release.r
@@ -357,4 +357,5 @@ flag_release <- function(pkg = ".") {
     "Once it is accepted, delete this file and tag the release (commit ", sha, ")."
   )
   writeLines(msg, file.path(pkg$path, "CRAN-RELEASE"))
+  usethis::use_build_ignore("CRAN-RELEASE")
 }