diff --git a/requirements-test.txt b/requirements-test.txt
index 16a883b81ce50..10d463de27be5 100644
--- a/requirements-test.txt
+++ b/requirements-test.txt
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ librosa # required for audio test
 opencv-python # required for video test
 peft
 requests
-ray[adag]>=2.35
+ray[adag]==2.35
 sentence-transformers # required for embedding
 soundfile # required for audio test
 compressed-tensors==0.4.0 # required for compressed-tensors
diff --git a/vllm/executor/ray_gpu_executor.py b/vllm/executor/ray_gpu_executor.py
index b124fe2e08ea6..9433dce842b09 100644
--- a/vllm/executor/ray_gpu_executor.py
+++ b/vllm/executor/ray_gpu_executor.py
@@ -437,8 +437,10 @@ def _check_ray_adag_installation(self):
         required_version = version.parse("2.35")
         current_version = version.parse(
             pkg_resources.get_distribution("ray").version)
-        if current_version < required_version:
-            raise ValueError(f"Ray version {required_version} or greater is "
+        # TODO: update the constraint once we adapt to the backward
+        # incompatible API change from ray 2.36
+        if current_version != required_version:
+            raise ValueError(f"Ray version {required_version} is "
                              f"required, but found {current_version}")
 
         import importlib.util