diff --git a/vllm/tokenizers/hf.py b/vllm/tokenizers/hf.py
index 03c71adb8d..b4248e229a 100644
--- a/vllm/tokenizers/hf.py
+++ b/vllm/tokenizers/hf.py
@@ -190,7 +190,10 @@ class CachedHfTokenizer(TokenizerLike):
                     "is a custom tokenizer not yet available in the "
                     "HuggingFace transformers library, consider "
                     "setting `trust_remote_code=True` in LLM or using "
-                    "the `--trust-remote-code` flag in the CLI."
+                    "the `--trust-remote-code` flag in the CLI. If the "
+                    "model was created with a newer version of "
+                    "transformers, consider upgrading: "
+                    "`uv pip install --upgrade transformers`"
                 )
                 raise RuntimeError(err_msg) from e
             else: