diff --git a/mm/damon/core.c b/mm/damon/core.c
index 6392f1cc97a3e0..e66823d6b10b00 100644
--- a/mm/damon/core.c
+++ b/mm/damon/core.c
@@ -1358,14 +1358,31 @@ static void damon_merge_regions_of(struct damon_target *t, unsigned int thres,
  * access frequencies are similar.  This is for minimizing the monitoring
  * overhead under the dynamically changeable access pattern.  If a merge was
  * unnecessarily made, later 'kdamond_split_regions()' will revert it.
+ *
+ * The total number of regions could be higher than the user-defined limit,
+ * max_nr_regions for some cases.  For example, the user can update
+ * max_nr_regions to a number that lower than the current number of regions
+ * while DAMON is running.  For such a case, repeat merging until the limit is
+ * met while increasing @threshold up to possible maximum level.
  */
 static void kdamond_merge_regions(struct damon_ctx *c, unsigned int threshold,
 				  unsigned long sz_limit)
 {
 	struct damon_target *t;
-
-	damon_for_each_target(t, c)
-		damon_merge_regions_of(t, threshold, sz_limit);
+	unsigned int nr_regions;
+	unsigned int max_thres;
+
+	max_thres = c->attrs.aggr_interval /
+		(c->attrs.sample_interval ?  c->attrs.sample_interval : 1);
+	do {
+		nr_regions = 0;
+		damon_for_each_target(t, c) {
+			damon_merge_regions_of(t, threshold, sz_limit);
+			nr_regions += damon_nr_regions(t);
+		}
+		threshold = max(1, threshold * 2);
+	} while (nr_regions > c->attrs.max_nr_regions &&
+			threshold / 2 < max_thres);
 }
 
 /*