diff --git a/container/deps/requirements.test.txt b/container/deps/requirements.test.txt
index 3c94a6e6cd8..2c54ab34e1d 100644
--- a/container/deps/requirements.test.txt
+++ b/container/deps/requirements.test.txt
@@ -16,8 +16,8 @@ coverage[toml]==7.13.1
 # For IFEval dataset loading in kvbm tests
 datasets==4.4.1
 filelock==3.25.1
-# For faster model downloads
-hf-xet
+# For faster model downloads (pin <1.5 until huggingface_hub adapts to new XetSession API)
+hf-xet<1.5
 # For Kubernetes operations in deploy tests
 kr8s==0.20.13
 kubernetes_asyncio==32.0.0