diff --git a/cmake/external/protobuf.cmake b/cmake/external/protobuf.cmake
index e05b7694ddf1e1652b00f156cde1a2d433c9fc46..3da3f10d7c91094ff8ae7daeadfb55e4e44eb731 100644
--- a/cmake/external/protobuf.cmake
+++ b/cmake/external/protobuf.cmake
@@ -203,7 +203,7 @@ FUNCTION(build_protobuf TARGET_NAME BUILD_FOR_HOST)
     ENDIF()
 
     SET(PROTOBUF_REPO "https://github.com/google/protobuf.git")
-    SET(PROTOBUF_TAG "9f75c5aa851cd877fb0d93ccc31b8567a6706546")
+    SET(PROTOBUF_TAG "v3.6.1")
 
     ExternalProject_Add(
         ${TARGET_NAME}
@@ -231,7 +231,7 @@ FUNCTION(build_protobuf TARGET_NAME BUILD_FOR_HOST)
     )
 ENDFUNCTION()
 
-SET(PROTOBUF_VERSION 3.1)
+SET(PROTOBUF_VERSION 3.6.1)
 
 IF(NOT PROTOBUF_FOUND)
     build_protobuf(extern_protobuf FALSE)
diff --git a/python/requirements.txt b/python/requirements.txt
index 5a70f1aa3ffc0ab6d4d148eb5bc26981784f2d32..6cbda1db545957b8e7b943366f9b954ff1dfdc77 100644
--- a/python/requirements.txt
+++ b/python/requirements.txt
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 requests==2.9.2
 numpy>=1.12
-protobuf==3.1
+protobuf>=3.6
 recordio>=0.1.0
 matplotlib==2.2.3 # TODO: let python3 paddlepaddle package use latest matplotlib
 rarfile