diff --git a/nemo/utils/callbacks/nemo_model_checkpoint.py b/nemo/utils/callbacks/nemo_model_checkpoint.py
index 1285bece3cc4..8752b6f30d84 100644
--- a/nemo/utils/callbacks/nemo_model_checkpoint.py
+++ b/nemo/utils/callbacks/nemo_model_checkpoint.py
@@ -237,7 +237,11 @@ def on_save_checkpoint(self, trainer, pl_module, checkpoint):
 
             self.previous_best_path = self.best_model_path
             old_state_dict = deepcopy(pl_module.state_dict())
-            checkpoint = torch.load(maybe_injected_best_model_path, map_location='cpu')
+            # This checkpoint was just written to disk by this same training run (see
+            # `_save_checkpoint` below), so it is trusted. It also contains the model's
+            # hparams (e.g. OmegaConf DictConfig), which `weights_only=True` (the default
+            # since torch 2.6) cannot unpickle, so it must be loaded with weights_only=False.
+            checkpoint = torch.load(maybe_injected_best_model_path, map_location='cpu', weights_only=False)
             if 'state_dict' in checkpoint:
                 checkpoint = checkpoint['state_dict']
             # get a new instanace of the model