diff --git a/.github/workflows/tests.yml b/.github/workflows/tests.yml
index b3fcdb61..b0463362 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/tests.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/tests.yml
@@ -70,15 +70,15 @@ jobs:
     strategy:
       fail-fast: false
       matrix:
-        docutils-version: ["0.17", "0.18", "0.19", "0.20"]
+        docutils-version: ["0.18", "0.19", "0.20", "0.21"]
 
     steps:
     - name: Checkout source
       uses: actions/checkout@v4
-    - name: Set up Python 3.8
+    - name: Set up Python 3.9
       uses: actions/setup-python@v5
       with:
-        python-version: "3.8"
+        python-version: "3.9"
     - name: Install setup
       run: |
         python -m pip install --upgrade pip
diff --git a/myst_parser/mdit_to_docutils/base.py b/myst_parser/mdit_to_docutils/base.py
index 4733dead..e604449b 100644
--- a/myst_parser/mdit_to_docutils/base.py
+++ b/myst_parser/mdit_to_docutils/base.py
@@ -1918,19 +1918,11 @@ def html_meta_to_nodes(
     if not data:
         return []
 
-    try:
-        meta_cls = nodes.meta
-    except AttributeError:
-        # docutils-0.17 or older
-        from docutils.parsers.rst.directives.html import MetaBody
-
-        meta_cls = MetaBody.meta
-
     output = []
 
     for key, value in data.items():
         content = str(value or "")
-        meta_node = meta_cls(content)
+        meta_node = nodes.meta(content)
         meta_node.source = document["source"]
         meta_node.line = line
         meta_node["content"] = content
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 27ec721f..01f5816d 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ keywords = [
 ]
 requires-python = ">=3.8"
 dependencies = [
-    "docutils>=0.16,<0.21",
+    "docutils>=0.18,<0.22",
     "jinja2", # required for substitutions, but let sphinx choose version
     "markdown-it-py~=3.0",
     "mdit-py-plugins~=0.4",
diff --git a/tests/test_sphinx/test_sphinx_builds.py b/tests/test_sphinx/test_sphinx_builds.py
index b4e7c10d..7e6b13a2 100644
--- a/tests/test_sphinx/test_sphinx_builds.py
+++ b/tests/test_sphinx/test_sphinx_builds.py
@@ -1,11 +1,6 @@
 """Uses sphinx's pytest fixture to run builds.
 
 see conftest.py for fixture usage
-
-NOTE: sphinx 3 & 4 regress against different output files,
-the major difference being sphinx 4 uses docutils 0.17,
-which uses semantic HTML tags
-(e.g. converting `<div class="section">` to `<section>`)
 """
 
 from __future__ import annotations