diff --git a/bionemo-recipes/models/geneformer/pyproject.toml b/bionemo-recipes/models/geneformer/pyproject.toml
index 2de37ed6b..6195a8438 100644
--- a/bionemo-recipes/models/geneformer/pyproject.toml
+++ b/bionemo-recipes/models/geneformer/pyproject.toml
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ dependencies = [
     "torch",
     "accelerate",
     "transformer_engine[pytorch]",
-    "transformers==4.51.3",
+    "transformers==4.53.0",
     "lightning",
     "nemo_toolkit[lightning]==2.4.0",
     "fiddle",