Just upgraded successfully to Magento 2.1.2.6 through composer:
composer require magento/product-community-edition 2.1.2.6 --no-update
Change the version accordingly e.g. 2.12.36
composer update
rm -rf var/di var/generation/* var/view_preprocessed/* var/cache/* var/page_cache
*// The issue following commands one by one
chown -R user:group .
chmod u+x bin/magento
php bin/magento cache:flush
php bin/magento setup:upgrade
ph bin/magento setup:di:compile
php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy
php bin/magento indexer:reindex
If getting permissions error, issue:
chown -R user:group .
command again where user and group correspond to your server user and user group.