Good news!
We have just released v2.9 of python-telegram-bot, which includes the following features:
- Support for Channels
- If long-polling times out, an exception is thrown instead of blocking forever
- The Emoji class is now compatible to Python 3, natively
- Because of that, future is now a dependency for python-telegram-bot. Running pip install python-telegram-bot --upgrade will take care of it.

v2.9.1 was just released, what a wild ride!
This release fixes problems for bots with slow connections.

If you had problems with timing out on getUpdates, this release brings you the network_delay-parameter, which allows you to increase the time getUpdates waits for the data to be transmitted over the network.

To update to v2.9.1, run:
pip install python-telegram-bot --upgrade

The just released v2.9.2 fixes issue #98 (https://github.com/leandrotoledo/python-telegram-bot/issues/98)

We just released v3.0 with awesome new features!

There's the new Updater and Dispatcher classes that will hopefully make creating bots easier, faster and more reliable. Check the docs and examples on GitHub!
Code that worked on v2.9.2 should still work fine.

Update to v3.0 with:
pip install --upgrade python-telegram-bot

This example should get you started: https://github.com/leandrotoledo/python-telegram-bot/blob/master/examples/updater_simplebot.py

Hi, we have some news for you!

We just moved the project from Leandros GitHub account to a GitHub-Organization called python-telegram-bot at https://github.com/orgs/python-telegram-bot/

We changed all URLs to point to the new project location, but old URLs should be redirected automatically.

For you, nothing should change. This is part of our plan to give the whole project more seriousness, and also to seperate the project from Leandro a bit, since he doesn't find the time to care for the project as much as he wants.

Eventually, Jannes (@jh0ker) will take the lead of the project. Leandro will keep being a part of it, though.

Thanks everyone for your help and support! It has been a pleasure being part of this. Keep up the good work - reporting bugs, requesting features, helping new users...

Y'all are rock stars! Have a great week!

Hey, we just released v3.1, which contains the following changes:

- The chat-field in Message is now of the new type Chat. (API update Oct 8 2015)
- Message now contains the optional fields supergroup_chat_created, migrate_to_chat_id, migrate_from_chat_id and channel_chat_created. (API update Nov 2015)

This might break backwards compability to v3.0, if you used the GroupChat class, which has been removed in favour of Chat. Please check before updating.

Released v3.1.1

- Fix a bug where handlers that use the @run_async-decorator could not have additional arguments
- Add groups and groupdict as additional optional arguments for regex-based handlers

Note: Handlers that use the @run_async-decorator are now required to have **kwargs at the end of their argument list. This enables them to receive optional arguments, as well. Please keep that in mind before updating.

Released v3.1.2

- Fix custom path for file downloads
- Don't stop the dispatcher thread on uncaught errors in handlers
- Change default poll interval in Updater from 1 to 0

Released v3.2

- Introducing JobQueue (original author: @franciscod)
- Streamlining all exceptions to TelegramError (Special thanks to @tsnoam)
- Proper locking of Updater and Dispatcher start and stop methods
- Small bugfixes

For more info on the JobQueue, check the README or take a look this example: https://github.com/python-telegram-bot/python-telegram-bot/blob/master/examples/timerbot.py

Also, since we changed all exceptions to TelegramError, you might want to check you exception handling code before updating in production.

We just published v3.3b1, which is a beta version for the inline bot API. Please check the attached example, and the Telegram Bot API resources.
Example: https://github.com/python-telegram-bot/python-telegram-bot/blob/inlinebots/examples/inlinebot.py

New stable release v3.3! It features

- Inline bots
- Send any file by URL
- Specialized exceptions: Unauthorized, InvalidToken, NetworkError and TimedOut
- Integration for botan.io (thanks to @ollmer)
- HTML Parsemode (thanks to @jlmadurga)
- Bugfixes and under-the-hood improvements

**Very special thanks to Noam Meltzer (@tsnoam) for all of his work!**

New stable release v3.4! It features

- Move Updater, Dispatcher and JobQueue to new telegram.ext submodule (thanks to @rahiel)
- Add disable_notification parameter (thanks to @aidarbiktimirov)
- Fix bug where commands sent by Telegram Web client would not be recognized (thanks to @shelomentsevd)
- Add option to skip old updates on bot startup
- Send files from BufferedReader

Released 4.0rc1

- Implement Bot API 2.0
- Almost complete recode of Dispatcher
- Please read the Transition Guide to 4.0: https://github.com/python-telegram-bot/python-telegram-bot/wiki/Transistion-guide-to-Version-4.0

To install, use pip install python-telegram-bot==4.0rc1
Please note: This release is not backwards compatible to 3.4