diff --git a/docker/Dockerfile.ubuntu b/docker/Dockerfile.ubuntu
index ff9cfa81..344bc8a9 100644
--- a/docker/Dockerfile.ubuntu
+++ b/docker/Dockerfile.ubuntu
@@ -80,12 +80,13 @@ RUN export PIP_EXTRA_INDEX_URL="${PIP_EXTRA_INDEX_URL}" && \
     pip install --no-cache-dir math_verify "gradio<5.33" "deepspeed<0.19" ray -U && \
     pip install --no-cache-dir mcore-bridge -i https://pypi.org/simple/ -U && \
     pip install --no-cache-dir liger_kernel wandb swanlab nvitop pre-commit transformers "trl<1.0" peft huggingface-hub -U && \
+    pip install --no-cache-dir -U "pip>=26" "setuptools>=80" wheel && \
     NVTE_WITH_NCCL_EP=0 NVTE_FRAMEWORK=pytorch MAX_JOBS=16 \
-        pip install --no-cache-dir --no-build-isolation "transformer_engine[pytorch]==2.18.0"; \
+        pip install --no-cache-dir --no-build-isolation "transformer_engine[pytorch]==2.18.0" && \
     cd /tmp && GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1 git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA/apex && \
     cd apex && pip install -v --disable-pip-version-check --no-cache-dir --no-build-isolation --config-settings "--build-option=--cpp_ext" --config-settings "--build-option=--cuda_ext" ./ && \
-    cd / && rm -fr /tmp/apex && pip cache purge; \
-    pip install --no-cache-dir "megatron-core==0.18.*" -U; \
+    cd / && rm -fr /tmp/apex && pip cache purge && \
+    pip install --no-cache-dir "megatron-core==0.18.*" -U && \
     pip install --no-cache-dir git+https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepGEMM.git@v2.1.1.post3 --no-build-isolation && \
     pip install --no-cache-dir -U flash-linear-attention --no-build-isolation && \
     pip install --no-cache-dir -U git+https://github.com/Dao-AILab/causal-conv1d --no-build-isolation && \