diff --git a/src/transformers/models/auto/tokenization_auto.py b/src/transformers/models/auto/tokenization_auto.py
index a861aee12c57..b7fe884af075 100644
--- a/src/transformers/models/auto/tokenization_auto.py
+++ b/src/transformers/models/auto/tokenization_auto.py
@@ -1096,6 +1096,12 @@ def from_pretrained(
                 trust_remote_code, pretrained_model_name_or_path, has_local_code, has_remote_code, upstream_repo
             )
 
+        # Detect missing dependency for Voxtral early and provide a clear error message
+        if getattr(config, "model_type", None) == "voxtral" and not is_mistral_common_available():
+            raise ImportError(
+                "The Voxtral tokenizer requires the 'mistral-common' package. Please install it using `pip install mistral-common`."
+            )
+
         if has_remote_code and trust_remote_code:
             tokenizer_class = get_class_from_dynamic_module(class_ref, pretrained_model_name_or_path, **kwargs)
             _ = kwargs.pop("code_revision", None)
diff --git a/tests/models/voxtral/test_tokenization_voxtral.py b/tests/models/voxtral/test_tokenization_voxtral.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..d227eae7886c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/models/voxtral/test_tokenization_voxtral.py
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+import pytest
+
+from transformers import AutoTokenizer
+from transformers.models.voxtral import VoxtralConfig
+import transformers.models.auto.tokenization_auto as ta
+
+
+def test_voxtral_tokenizer_requires_mistral_common(monkeypatch):
+    # Simulate that mistral_common is not available for the auto-tokenizer logic
+    monkeypatch.setattr(ta, "is_mistral_common_available", lambda: False)
+    # Avoid network access by short-circuiting tokenizer_config retrieval
+    monkeypatch.setattr(ta, "get_tokenizer_config", lambda *args, **kwargs: {})
+    with pytest.raises(ImportError, match="mistral-common"):
+        # Using a dummy path since the guard should raise before any file access
+        AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("dummy", config=VoxtralConfig())
+
+