diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index e2b47c83..4b2fb0c8 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
+
 ## v1.18.0
 
 * [CHANGE] [#479](https://github.com/k8ssandra/cass-operator/issues/479) Set the default deployed DSE image to use our newer management-api by changing the repository to datastax/dse-mgmtapi-6_8
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index ed6aaab0..d12fb0d9 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 ?= 1.18.0
+VERSION ?= 1.19.0
 
 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 9368542f..7af34fbc 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: "cr.k8ssandra.io/k8ssandra/system-logger:v1.18.0"
+  system-logger: "k8ssandra/system-logger:latest"
   config-builder: "cr.dtsx.io/datastax/cass-config-builder:1.0-ubi7"
   k8ssandra-client: "cr.k8ssandra.io/k8ssandra/k8ssandra-client:v0.2.1"
   # cassandra:
diff --git a/config/manager/kustomization.yaml b/config/manager/kustomization.yaml
index 497910e4..7621efda 100644
--- a/config/manager/kustomization.yaml
+++ b/config/manager/kustomization.yaml
@@ -13,5 +13,5 @@ apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
 kind: Kustomization
 images:
 - name: controller
-  newName: cr.k8ssandra.io/k8ssandra/cass-operator
-  newTag: v1.18.0
+  newName: k8ssandra/cass-operator
+  newTag: latest