diff --git a/ci/requirements-3.6_DOC.run b/ci/requirements-3.6_DOC.run
index 6c45e3371e9cf..084f38ce17eb2 100644
--- a/ci/requirements-3.6_DOC.run
+++ b/ci/requirements-3.6_DOC.run
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 ipython
 ipykernel
 ipywidgets
-sphinx=1.5*
+sphinx
 nbconvert
 nbformat
 notebook
diff --git a/ci/requirements_dev.txt b/ci/requirements_dev.txt
index a474658fa2922..82f8de277c57b 100644
--- a/ci/requirements_dev.txt
+++ b/ci/requirements_dev.txt
@@ -7,4 +7,4 @@ pytest>=3.1
 python-dateutil>=2.5.0
 pytz
 setuptools>=3.3
-sphinx=1.5*
+sphinx
diff --git a/doc/sphinxext/numpydoc/numpydoc.py b/doc/sphinxext/numpydoc/numpydoc.py
index 2bc2d1e91ed3f..4861aa90edce1 100755
--- a/doc/sphinxext/numpydoc/numpydoc.py
+++ b/doc/sphinxext/numpydoc/numpydoc.py
@@ -26,7 +26,6 @@
     raise RuntimeError("Sphinx 1.0.1 or newer is required")
 
 from .docscrape_sphinx import get_doc_object, SphinxDocString
-from sphinx.util.compat import Directive
 
 if sys.version_info[0] >= 3:
     sixu = lambda s: s