diff --git a/CMakeLists.txt b/CMakeLists.txt
index 4017fc4971..4364925164 100644
--- a/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -26,9 +26,9 @@ else()
 endif()
 
 set(VERSION_MAJOR 1)
-set(VERSION_MINOR 7)
+set(VERSION_MINOR 8)
 set(VERSION_PATCH 0)
-set(VERSION_SUFFIX develop)
+set(VERSION_SUFFIX rc1)
 
 if (VERSION_SUFFIX)
    set(VERSION_FULL "${VERSION_MAJOR}.${VERSION_MINOR}.${VERSION_PATCH}-${VERSION_SUFFIX}")
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index ce7e787fb9..b52e241ff3 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 # EOSIO.CDT (Contract Development Toolkit)
-## Version : 1.7.0
+## Version : 1.8.0-rc1
 
 EOSIO.CDT is a toolchain for WebAssembly (WASM) and set of tools to facilitate smart contract development for the EOSIO platform. In addition to being a general purpose WebAssembly toolchain, [EOSIO](https://github.com/eosio/eos) specific optimizations are available to support building EOSIO smart contracts.  This new toolchain is built around [Clang 7](https://github.com/eosio/llvm), which means that EOSIO.CDT has the most currently available optimizations and analyses from LLVM, but as the WASM target is still considered experimental, some optimizations are incomplete or not available.