diff --git a/test-requirements.txt b/test-requirements.txt
index 2e28ed25..be01794f 100644
--- a/test-requirements.txt
+++ b/test-requirements.txt
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ requests!=2.12.2,!=2.13.0,>=2.10.0 # Apache-2.0
 ndg-httpsclient>=0.4.2;python_version<'3.0' # BSD
 
 # this is required for the docs build jobs
-sphinx>=1.5.1 # BSD
+sphinx!=1.6.1,>=1.5.1 # BSD
 oslosphinx>=4.7.0 # Apache-2.0
 openstackdocstheme>=1.5.0 # Apache-2.0
 doc8 # Apache-2.0