diff --git a/docs/docsite/requirements.txt b/docs/docsite/requirements.txt
index 7e2ee220721..f26a963c1f3 100644
--- a/docs/docsite/requirements.txt
+++ b/docs/docsite/requirements.txt
@@ -9,3 +9,4 @@ resolvelib
 Pygments >= 2.4.0
 straight.plugin # Needed for hacking/build-ansible.py which is the backend build script
 antsibull >= 0.25.0
+docutils==0.16 # pin for now until sphinx_rtd_theme is compatible with 0.17 or later