diff --git a/requirements-slm.txt b/requirements-slm.txt
index a23fd0c..5b78365 100644
--- a/requirements-slm.txt
+++ b/requirements-slm.txt
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ transformers>=4.44
 peft>=0.12
 trl>=0.9
 accelerate>=0.33
-datasets>=2.20
+datasets>=5.0.1
 bitsandbytes>=0.43        # 4-bit quant; Windows wheels exist (else use WSL2)
 
 # faster + far less VRAM (Linux / WSL2; native-Windows support is limited) ------