diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index 60e76c7f2ede6beaca11659020d5991a75d5b741..fbec88c7966d6ea93495519843d6cda63f622661 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -53,10 +53,14 @@ RUN localedef -i en_US -f UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8
 
 # FIXME: due to temporary ipykernel dependency issue, specify ipykernel jupyter
 # version util jupyter fixes this issue.
+
+# specify sphinx version as 1.5.6 and remove -U option for [pip install -U
+# sphinx-rtd-theme] since -U option will cause sphinx being updated to newest
+# version(1.7.1 for now), which causes building documentation failed.
 RUN pip install --upgrade pip && \
     pip install -U wheel && \
-    pip install -U docopt PyYAML sphinx && \
-    pip install -U sphinx-rtd-theme==0.1.9 recommonmark
+    pip install -U docopt PyYAML sphinx==1.5.6 && \
+    pip install sphinx-rtd-theme==0.1.9 recommonmark
 
 RUN pip install pre-commit 'ipython==5.3.0' && \
     pip install 'ipykernel==4.6.0' 'jupyter==1.0.0' && \