diff --git a/annif/backend/svc.py b/annif/backend/svc.py
index e2f6c33a8..30fb23eb4 100644
--- a/annif/backend/svc.py
+++ b/annif/backend/svc.py
@@ -67,7 +67,7 @@ def _corpus_to_texts_and_classes(
 
     def _train_classifier(self, veccorpus: csr_matrix, classes: list[int]) -> None:
         self.info("creating classifier")
-        self._model = LinearSVC()
+        self._model = LinearSVC(dual="auto")
         self._model.fit(veccorpus, classes)
         annif.util.atomic_save(
             self._model, self.datadir, self.MODEL_FILE, method=joblib.dump