diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 89770b47b..7f3e4c316 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -76,4 +76,4 @@ Config/usethis/last-upkeep: 2025-09-07
 Encoding: UTF-8
 Roxygen: list(markdown = TRUE)
 RoxygenNote: 7.3.3
-SystemRequirements: pandoc
+SystemRequirements: pandoc (>= 2.10.1)
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index a23a28190..e5087ea93 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@
 
 # pkgdown 2.2.0
 
+* Make `build_llm_docs()` more robust to the use of old Pandoc (@nanxstats, @galachad, #2952, #2954)
+
 ## Lifecycle changes
 
 * `autolink_html()` deprecated in 1.6.0 and `preview_page()` have been removed.
diff --git a/R/build-llm.R b/R/build-llm.R
index 053cbc0a8..15284e639 100644
--- a/R/build-llm.R
+++ b/R/build-llm.R
@@ -76,11 +76,17 @@ convert_md <- function(src_path, dst_path, url = NULL) {
   xml2::write_html(main_html, path, format = FALSE)
   on.exit(file_delete(path), add = TRUE)
 
+  if (rmarkdown::pandoc_available("2.10.1")) {
+    to <- "gfm+definition_lists-raw_html"
+  } else {
+    to <- "gfm-raw_html"
+  }
+
   rmarkdown::pandoc_convert(
     input = path,
     output = dst_path,
     from = "html",
-    to = "gfm+definition_lists-raw_html",
+    to = to,
   )
 }