diff --git a/tests/requirements-ci.txt b/tests/requirements-ci.txt
index 0d3b9a1fee..bb41f87fd7 100644
--- a/tests/requirements-ci.txt
+++ b/tests/requirements-ci.txt
@@ -15,4 +15,5 @@ pytest-mock
 pytest-rerunfailures
 pytest-xdist
 ruamel.yaml
+setuptools <75.1.0  # temporary, see https://github.com/conda/conda-build/issues/5493
 tomli  # [py<3.11] for coverage pyproject.toml