diff --git a/requirements-reference.txt b/requirements-reference.txt
index 08511fa533e..183bc1f73c4 100644
--- a/requirements-reference.txt
+++ b/requirements-reference.txt
@@ -1,2 +1,4 @@
+# we can't build google-re2 from sources
+--only-binary google-re2
 google-re2
 Pillow