diff --git a/containers/debian/Dockerfile b/containers/debian/Dockerfile
index d298c1110a93eee2a0e29133c4414ef6aaa7e870..a0228889c71aafe09ddf2f49a50fe21a4b4fc5f7 100644
--- a/containers/debian/Dockerfile
+++ b/containers/debian/Dockerfile
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@ ENV CLICOLOR_FORCE=1                                                    \
 
 ## Install additional packages. Remove the auto-cleanup functionality
 ## for docker, as we're using the new buildkit cache instead.
+## We also install gitlab-runner, from the bullseye package (as bookworm is not available atm)
 ## TODO: libyaml-cpp-dev is a dependency for afterburner. We can probably remove
 ##       this once afterburner is added to spack
 RUN --mount=type=cache,target=/var/cache/apt                            \
@@ -69,6 +70,8 @@ RUN --mount=type=cache,target=/var/cache/apt                            \
  && curl -L                                                             \
     "https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/runner/gitlab-runner/script.deb.sh" \
     | bash                                                              \
+ && sed -i "s/bookworm/bullseye/"                                       \
+           /etc/apt/sources.list.d/runner_gitlab-runner.list            \
  && apt-get -yqq update                                                 \
  && apt-get -yqq install --no-install-recommends                        \
         gitlab-runner                                                   \