diff --git a/Doc/library/io.rst b/Doc/library/io.rst
index e06ab3fd89b..9e4161a2336 100644
--- a/Doc/library/io.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/io.rst
@@ -270,12 +270,18 @@ I/O Base Classes
       interpreted relative to the position indicated by *whence*.  Values for
       *whence* are:
 
-      * ``0`` -- start of the stream (the default); *offset* should be zero or positive
-      * ``1`` -- current stream position; *offset* may be negative
-      * ``2`` -- end of the stream; *offset* is usually negative
+      * :data:`SEEK_SET` or ``0`` -- start of the stream (the default);
+        *offset* should be zero or positive
+      * :data:`SEEK_CUR` or ``1`` -- current stream position; *offset* may
+        be negative
+      * :data:`SEEK_END` or ``2`` -- end of the stream; *offset* is usually
+        negative
 
       Return the new absolute position.
 
+      .. versionadded:: 2.7
+         The ``SEEK_*`` constants
+
    .. method:: seekable()
 
       Return ``True`` if the stream supports random access.  If ``False``,
diff --git a/Lib/io.py b/Lib/io.py
index 8a8cf699af6..56ceb58ce10 100644
--- a/Lib/io.py
+++ b/Lib/io.py
@@ -52,7 +52,8 @@ __author__ = ("Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org>, "
 __all__ = ["BlockingIOError", "open", "IOBase", "RawIOBase", "FileIO",
            "BytesIO", "StringIO", "BufferedIOBase",
            "BufferedReader", "BufferedWriter", "BufferedRWPair",
-           "BufferedRandom", "TextIOBase", "TextIOWrapper"]
+           "BufferedRandom", "TextIOBase", "TextIOWrapper",
+           "SEEK_SET", "SEEK_CUR", "SEEK_END"]
 
 
 import _io
@@ -65,6 +66,11 @@ from _io import (DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE, BlockingIOError, UnsupportedOperation,
 
 OpenWrapper = _io.open # for compatibility with _pyio
 
+# for seek()
+SEEK_SET = 0
+SEEK_CUR = 1
+SEEK_END = 2
+
 # Declaring ABCs in C is tricky so we do it here.
 # Method descriptions and default implementations are inherited from the C
 # version however.