diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml
index d73fd39aa7a2ee87c0e31436ffc14df2213134c9..387367a2305e7bf582e29538ab9e51571b9ae75b 100644
--- a/.travis.yml
+++ b/.travis.yml
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ before_install:
   - if [[ "$JOB" == "PRE_COMMIT" ]]; then sudo ln -s /usr/bin/clang-format-3.8 /usr/bin/clang-format; fi
   # Paddle is using protobuf 3.1 currently. Protobuf 3.2 breaks the compatibility. So we specify the python 
   # protobuf version.
-  - pip install numpy wheel 'protobuf==3.1' sphinx recommonmark sphinx-rtd-theme==0.1.9 virtualenv pre-commit requests==2.9.2 LinkChecker
+  - pip install numpy wheel 'protobuf==3.1' sphinx==1.5.6 recommonmark sphinx-rtd-theme==0.1.9 virtualenv pre-commit requests==2.9.2 LinkChecker
   - |
     function timeout() { perl -e 'alarm shift; exec @ARGV' "$@"; }
 script: