diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 205035507..558a38ea8 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -34,9 +34,28 @@ To create the package for pypi.
 
 """
 
+import shutil
+from pathlib import Path
+
 from setuptools import find_packages, setup
 
 
+# Remove stale transformers.egg-info directory to avoid https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/5466
+stale_egg_info = Path(__file__).parent / "transformers.egg-info"
+if stale_egg_info.exists():
+    print(
+        (
+            "Warning: {} exists.\n\n"
+            "If you recently updated transformers to 3.0 or later, this is expected,\n"
+            "but it may prevent transformers from installing in editable mode.\n\n"
+            "This directory is automatically generated by Python's packaging tools.\n"
+            "I will remove it now.\n\n"
+            "See https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/5466 for details.\n"
+        ).format(stale_egg_info)
+    )
+    shutil.rmtree(stale_egg_info)
+
+
 extras = {}
 
 extras["mecab"] = ["mecab-python3"]