diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 05ac85393..9758dfc43 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ Features added
 Bugs fixed
 ----------
 
+* #1976: Avoid "2.0" version of Babel because it doesn't work with Windows environment.
 * Add a "default.css" stylesheet (which imports "classic.css") for compatibility.
 * #1788: graphviz extension raises exception when caption option is present.
 * #1789: ``:pyobject:`` option of ``literalinclude`` directive includes following
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 297891545..e722c909b 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ requires = [
     'Pygments>=2.0',
     'docutils>=0.11',
     'snowballstemmer>=1.1',
-    'babel>=1.3',
+    'babel>=1.3,!=2.0',
     'alabaster>=0.7,<0.8',
     'sphinx_rtd_theme>=0.1,<0.2',
 ]