diff --git a/pywikibot/comms/eventstreams.py b/pywikibot/comms/eventstreams.py
index df6773f0ae..5e27c6d150 100644
--- a/pywikibot/comms/eventstreams.py
+++ b/pywikibot/comms/eventstreams.py
@@ -8,16 +8,18 @@
     pip install sseclient
 """
 #
-# (C) xqt, 2017
-# (C) Pywikibot team, 2017
+# (C) xqt, 2017-2018
+# (C) Pywikibot team, 2017-2018
 #
 # Distributed under the terms of the MIT license.
 #
 from __future__ import absolute_import, unicode_literals
 
+from distutils.version import LooseVersion
 import json
 import socket
 
+import requests
 from requests.packages.urllib3.exceptions import ProtocolError
 from requests.packages.urllib3.response import httplib
 
@@ -29,6 +31,12 @@
 from pywikibot import config, debug, Site, warning
 from pywikibot.tools import StringTypes
 
+if LooseVersion(requests.__version__) < LooseVersion('2.9'):
+    raise ImportError(
+        'requests >= 2.9 is required for EventStreams;\n'
+        "install it with 'pip install \"requests>=2.9,!=2.18.2\"'\n")
+
+
 _logger = 'pywikibot.eventstreams'
 
 
diff --git a/requests-requirements.txt b/requests-requirements.txt
index cd0deff607..6b4eed548c 100644
--- a/requests-requirements.txt
+++ b/requests-requirements.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-requests>=2.4.1,!=2.18.2
+requests>=2.9,!=2.18.2
 
 # requests security extra
 # Bug T105767 on Python 2.7 release 9+
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index cb6d10c8fd..bf40d5264a 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
 # $ awk -F '[#>=]' '{print $1}' requirements.txt | xargs apt-cache search
 
 # mandatory; see README.conversion.txt
-requests>=2.4.1,!=2.18.2
+requests>=2.9,!=2.18.2
 
 # requests security extra
 cryptography>=1.3.4 ; python_version != '2.6' and python_full_version < '2.7.9'
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 92063cb678..81c9e8e8dd 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ def python_is_supported():
 
 test_deps = ['bz2file', 'mock']
 
-dependencies = ['requests!=2.18.2']
+dependencies = ['requests>=2.9,!=2.18.2']
 
 # the irc module has no Python 2.6 support since 10.0
 irc_dep = 'irc==8.9' if sys.version_info < (2, 7) else 'irc'