diff --git a/.github/workflows/build_release_candidate.yml b/.github/workflows/build_release_candidate.yml
index 3f9aa95ede15..de031aa59209 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/build_release_candidate.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/build_release_candidate.yml
@@ -281,7 +281,7 @@ jobs:
         with:
           distribution: 'temurin'
           java-version: |
-            17
+            21
             11
       - name: Install Python 3.10
         uses: actions/setup-python@v5
@@ -300,7 +300,7 @@ jobs:
           username: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_USER }}
           password: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_TOKEN }}
       - name: Push docker images
-        run: ./gradlew ${{ matrix.images_to_publish.gradle_task }} -PisRelease -Pdocker-pull-licenses -Pprune-images ${{ matrix.images_to_publish.include_skip_flags }} -Pdocker-tag=${{ github.event.inputs.RELEASE }}rc${{ github.event.inputs.RC }} --no-daemon --no-parallel
+        run: ./gradlew ${{ matrix.images_to_publish.gradle_task }} -PisRelease -Pdocker-pull-licenses -Pprune-images ${{ matrix.images_to_publish.include_skip_flags }} -Pdocker-tag=${{ github.event.inputs.RELEASE }}rc${{ github.event.inputs.RC }} -Pjava21Home=$JAVA_HOME_21_X64 --no-daemon --no-parallel
 
   beam_site_pr:
     if:  ${{ fromJson(github.event.inputs.STAGE).beam_site_pr == 'yes'}}
diff --git a/sdks/python/apache_beam/examples/inference/online_clustering/clustering_pipeline/setup.py b/sdks/python/apache_beam/examples/inference/online_clustering/clustering_pipeline/setup.py
index 69f6aecf2d5f..e5d7430c0506 100644
--- a/sdks/python/apache_beam/examples/inference/online_clustering/clustering_pipeline/setup.py
+++ b/sdks/python/apache_beam/examples/inference/online_clustering/clustering_pipeline/setup.py
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@
 
 REQUIREMENTS = [
     "apache-beam[gcp]==2.40.0",
-    "transformers==4.38.0",
+    "transformers==5.3.0",
     "torch==2.12.0",
     "scikit-learn==1.0.2",
 ]