diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/ansible-test-rhel-requirements.yml b/changelogs/fragments/ansible-test-rhel-requirements.yml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..8ad83b129a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/fragments/ansible-test-rhel-requirements.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+minor_changes:
+  - ansible-test - Provisioning of RHEL instances now includes installation of pinned versions of ``packaging`` and ``pyparsing`` to match the downstream vendored versions.
diff --git a/test/lib/ansible_test/_data/setup/remote.sh b/test/lib/ansible_test/_data/setup/remote.sh
index 6a70863a0ee..f6b537009b6 100644
--- a/test/lib/ansible_test/_data/setup/remote.sh
+++ b/test/lib/ansible_test/_data/setup/remote.sh
@@ -70,6 +70,9 @@ elif [ "${platform}" = "rhel" ]; then
 
         install_pip
     fi
+
+    # pin packaging and pyparsing to match the downstream vendored versions
+    "${python_interpreter}" -m pip install packaging==20.4 pyparsing==2.4.7 --disable-pip-version-check
 elif [ "${platform}" = "centos" ]; then
     while true; do
         yum install -q -y \