diff --git a/.release-please-manifest.json b/.release-please-manifest.json
index 46e7a463..18e9f06a 100644
--- a/.release-please-manifest.json
+++ b/.release-please-manifest.json
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 {
-  ".": "1.17.0"
+  ".": "1.18.0"
 }
diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index d5550faa..2c9c73db 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,5 +1,17 @@
 # Changelog
 
+## [1.18.0](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/evalbench/compare/v1.17.0...v1.18.0) (2026-09-08)
+
+
+### Features
+
+* **scorers:** align remote delegated scorer signatures with native comparators ([fde9cbe](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/evalbench/commit/fde9cbe1ba74e2ee6f2579a38c3b5dcdbac55e81))
+
+
+### Bug Fixes
+
+* **mp:** release stage thread pools so evaluate() stops leaking workers ([55b9c7e](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/evalbench/commit/55b9c7e0f45b502fa1dd9de74080d13651b61cde))
+
 ## [1.17.0](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/evalbench/compare/v1.16.0...v1.17.0) (2026-09-04)
 
 
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index b41a78c2..bcdb97f1 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"
 
 [project]
 name = "google-evalbench"
-version = "1.17.0"
+version = "1.18.0"
 requires-python = ">=3.10"
 description = "Evalbench - evaluation benchmarking framework"
 readme = "README.md"