diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 14437eb..4dce5cd 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ lxml>=6.0.2,<7.0.0                # CVE-2025-24928 + additional libxml2 security
 playwright>=1.56.0,<2.0.0         # CVE-2025-59288 fix (macOS)
 Pillow>=12.1.0,<13.0.0            # CVE-2025-48379 fix
 urllib3>=2.6.3,<3.0.0             # CRITICAL: CVE-2026-21441 (CVSS 8.9), CVE-2025-66418
-validators>=0.22.0,<1.0.0         # No known CVEs
+validators>=0.35.0,<1.0.0         # No known CVEs
 rapidocr-onnxruntime>=1.2.3,<2.0.0 # Optional OCR layer for section-level visual intelligence
 matplotlib>=3.9.2,<4.0.0         # Chart rendering for reference-style audit figures