diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index b69b8dbee..2cbd66321 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ fish depends on a curses implementation, such as ncurses. The headers and librar
 
 fish requires gettext for translation support.
 
-Building the documentation requires Doxygen 1.5 or newer.
+Building the documentation requires Doxygen 1.8 or newer.
 
 ### Autotools Build
 
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index 037ee8fad..f36e26025 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ AS_IF([test x$local_gettext != xno],
 # Build/clean the documentation only if Doxygen is available
 #
 
-doxygen_minimum=1.5
+doxygen_minimum=1.8
 
 AC_ARG_WITH(
   doxygen,