diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 1294a2cc448..58376cba599 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -13,4 +13,4 @@ rouge-score>=0.0.4
 sentencepiece>=0.1.95
 pytorch-lightning-bolts==0.3.0
 filelock  # comes with 3rd-party dependency
-pycocotools>=2.0.2
+pycocotools>=2.0.2 ; python_version >= "3.7"