diff --git a/pkgs/by-name/ni/ninja/package.nix b/pkgs/by-name/ni/ninja/package.nix
index fe89a9c1e670..25be8510ad35 100644
--- a/pkgs/by-name/ni/ninja/package.nix
+++ b/pkgs/by-name/ni/ninja/package.nix
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
   lib,
   stdenv,
   fetchFromGitHub,
+  fetchpatch,
   asciidoc,
   docbook_xml_dtd_45,
   docbook_xsl,
@@ -52,6 +53,15 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation (finalAttrs: {
       libxslt.bin
     ];
 
+  # TODO: remove together with ninja 1.11
+  patches = lib.optionals (lib.versionOlder finalAttrs.version "1.12") [
+    (fetchpatch {
+      name = "ninja1.11-python3.13-compat.patch";
+      url = "https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/commit/9cf13cd1ecb7ae649394f4133d121a01e191560b.patch";
+      hash = "sha256-zlMs9LDJ2thtiSUjbsONyqoyYxrB/Ilt2Ljr0nCU6nQ=";
+    })
+  ];
+
   postPatch = ''
     # write rebuild args to file after bootstrap
     substituteInPlace configure.py --replace "subprocess.check_call(rebuild_args)" "open('rebuild_args','w').write(rebuild_args[0])"