You can specify arguments to the forked maven instance on the command line:
mvn release:prepare -Darguments="-DskipTests"
mvn release:perform -Darguments="-DskipTests"
or specify a maven-release-plugin configuration in your pom, perhaps under pluginManagement:
<plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-release-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <arguments>-DskipTests</arguments> </configuration> </plugin>