diff --git a/.github/workflows/gh-ci.yaml b/.github/workflows/gh-ci.yaml
index 16b40ec04d4..6d65e645958 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/gh-ci.yaml
+++ b/.github/workflows/gh-ci.yaml
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ defaults:
 
 env:
   MDA_CONDA_MIN_DEPS: "pip pytest==6.1.2 mmtf-python biopython networkx cython matplotlib scipy griddataformats hypothesis gsd codecov"
-  MDA_CONDA_EXTRA_DEPS: "seaborn>=0.7.0 clustalw=2.1 netcdf4 scikit-learn joblib>=0.12 chemfiles tqdm>=4.43.0 tidynamics>=1.0.0 rdkit>=2020.03.1 h5py==2.10.0"
+  MDA_CONDA_EXTRA_DEPS: "seaborn>=0.7.0 clustalw=2.1 netcdf4 scikit-learn joblib>=0.12 chemfiles>=0.9 tqdm>=4.43.0 tidynamics>=1.0.0 rdkit>=2020.03.1 h5py==2.10.0"
   MDA_PIP_MIN_DEPS: 'coveralls coverage<5 pytest-cov pytest-xdist'
   MDA_PIP_EXTRA_DEPS: 'duecredit parmed'
 
diff --git a/azure-pipelines.yml b/azure-pipelines.yml
index 082c556c159..0f1317f3663 100644
--- a/azure-pipelines.yml
+++ b/azure-pipelines.yml
@@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ jobs:
   - script: >-
       python -m pip install
       biopython
-      chemfiles
+      chemfiles>=0.9.3
       duecredit
       gsd==1.9.3
       joblib
diff --git a/maintainer/conda/environment.yml b/maintainer/conda/environment.yml
index 4d4e48d7bec..f9f76761924 100644
--- a/maintainer/conda/environment.yml
+++ b/maintainer/conda/environment.yml
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ channels:
   - defaults
   - conda-forge
 dependencies:
-  - chemfiles
+  - chemfiles>=0.9
   - codecov
   - cython
   - griddataformats
@@ -31,4 +31,4 @@ dependencies:
       - duecredit
       - parmed
       - msmb_theme==1.2.0
-      - sphinx-sitemap==1.0.2
\ No newline at end of file
+      - sphinx-sitemap==1.0.2