diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -8,6 +8,8 @@
 click
 flask
 humanize
+importlib_metadata < 5.0  # breaks compatibility with current kombu
+                          # https://github.com/celery/kombu/issues/1600
 pika >= 1.1.0
 psycopg2
 pyyaml