diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index f5b66061..ec285fea 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -9,6 +9,8 @@ Changelog for Cass Operator, new PRs should update the `main / unreleased` secti
 * [BUGFIX]
 ```
 
+## unreleased
+
 ## v1.17.0
 
 * [CHANGE] [#565](https://github.com/k8ssandra/cass-operator/issues/565) Replace the use of wget with curl when making Kubernetes -> management-api HTTP(S) calls
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 8503d230..6661267a 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 # - use the VERSION as arg of the bundle target (e.g make bundle VERSION=0.0.2)
 # - use environment variables to overwrite this value (e.g export VERSION=0.0.2)
 
-VERSION ?= 1.17.0
+VERSION ?= 1.18.0
 
 COMMIT := $(shell git rev-parse --short HEAD)
 DATE := $(shell date +%Y%m%d)
diff --git a/config/manager/image_config.yaml b/config/manager/image_config.yaml
index 02a2a7be..115e9cd1 100644
--- a/config/manager/image_config.yaml
+++ b/config/manager/image_config.yaml
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ kind: ImageConfig
 metadata:
   name: image-config
 images:
-  system-logger: "k8ssandra/system-logger:v1.17.0"
+  system-logger: "k8ssandra/system-logger:latest"
   config-builder: "datastax/cass-config-builder:1.0-ubi7"
   k8ssandra-client: "k8ssandra/k8ssandra-client:v0.2.0"
   # cassandra:
diff --git a/config/manager/kustomization.yaml b/config/manager/kustomization.yaml
index 3fb76428..7621efda 100644
--- a/config/manager/kustomization.yaml
+++ b/config/manager/kustomization.yaml
@@ -14,4 +14,4 @@ kind: Kustomization
 images:
 - name: controller
   newName: k8ssandra/cass-operator
-  newTag: v1.17.0
+  newTag: latest