diff --git a/.ci/test.sh b/.ci/test.sh
index c6574b264f80..af7cae2e3858 100755
--- a/.ci/test.sh
+++ b/.ci/test.sh
@@ -124,7 +124,7 @@ fi
 # ref: https://github.com/microsoft/LightGBM/issues/6030
 CONSTRAINED_DEPENDENCIES="'dask-core>=2023.5.0' 'distributed>=2023.5.0' 'pandas>=2.0'"
 if [[ $PYTHON_VERSION == "3.7" ]]; then
-    CONSTRAINED_DEPENDENCIES="'dask-core' 'distributed 'pandas<2.0'"
+    CONSTRAINED_DEPENDENCIES="'dask-core' 'distributed' 'pandas<2.0'"
 fi
 
 # including python=version[build=*cpython] to ensure that conda doesn't fall back to pypy