diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 6934b936..b3dacd98 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -7,6 +7,14 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 
 ## [Unreleased]
 
+### Fixed
+
+- **`redis` 8.1 broke the first query on every fresh install** —
+  `falkordb`'s cluster probe forwarded async-pool kwargs to the sync
+  `redis.Redis()` constructor, which rejects them. Fixed upstream in
+  `falkordb` 1.7.0, so the floor moves to `falkordb>=1.7` — the old
+  `>=1.0` still allowed 1.6.x to resolve against the broken redis.
+
 ## [1.4.0] - 2026-08-10
 
 Chunk-level extraction cache for `update()` (#288): re-ingesting a
diff --git a/graphrag_sdk/pyproject.toml b/graphrag_sdk/pyproject.toml
index 45fe9af6..a2d8650e 100644
--- a/graphrag_sdk/pyproject.toml
+++ b/graphrag_sdk/pyproject.toml
@@ -33,7 +33,9 @@ classifiers = [
 
 dependencies = [
     "pydantic>=2.0,<3.0",
-    "falkordb>=1.0,<2",
+    # >=1.7: earlier versions crash on redis 8.1 and don't bound it.
+    # falkordb owns the redis dependency, so it isn't declared here.
+    "falkordb>=1.7,<2",
     "numpy>=1.24,<3",
     "python-dotenv>=1.0",
     "tiktoken>=0.5,<1.0",