diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 2e83567741..e636b65ab8 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -6,7 +6,10 @@ What's New in astroid 2.6.0?
 ============================
 Release Date: TBA
 
+- A dependency to ``importlib-metadata`` was added for python 3.6 and 3.7.
+  This is due to the fact that the version is calculated based on tag since 2.5.4.
 
+  Closes #1016
 
 What's New in astroid 2.5.8?
 ============================
diff --git a/astroid/__pkginfo__.py b/astroid/__pkginfo__.py
index 9f8b5c17f3..ec7e966de6 100644
--- a/astroid/__pkginfo__.py
+++ b/astroid/__pkginfo__.py
@@ -26,11 +26,11 @@
 
 """astroid packaging information"""
 
-from pkg_resources import DistributionNotFound, get_distribution
+from importlib_metadata import PackageNotFoundError, version
 
 try:
-    __version__ = get_distribution("astroid").version
-except DistributionNotFound:
-    __version__ = "2.5.7+"
+    __version__ = version("astroid")
+except PackageNotFoundError:
+    __version__ = "2.6.0+"
 
 version = __version__
diff --git a/setup.cfg b/setup.cfg
index 38621c3503..0ddc44944b 100644
--- a/setup.cfg
+++ b/setup.cfg
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ install_requires =
     wrapt>=1.11,<1.13
     typed-ast>=1.4.0,<1.5;implementation_name=="cpython" and python_version<"3.8"
     typing-extensions>=3.7.4;python_version<"3.8"
+    importlib-metadata>=4.0.0
 setup_requires =
   setuptools_scm
 python_requires = ~=3.6