diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index 8b443e4..724ab0f 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@ COPY pyproject.toml uv.lock .python-version ./
 
 RUN uv sync --locked --no-dev --no-cache
 
+RUN .venv/bin/python -m nltk.downloader -d /usr/local/share/nltk_data stopwords
+
 COPY . .
 
 ENV PATH="/app/.venv/bin:$PATH"
diff --git a/src/cogs/word_cloud.py b/src/cogs/word_cloud.py
index 79e4c25..365ed60 100644
--- a/src/cogs/word_cloud.py
+++ b/src/cogs/word_cloud.py
@@ -45,7 +45,10 @@ class WordCloud(commands.Cog):
         self.consenting_users = []
         self.populate_consenting_users()
 
-        nltk.download("stopwords")
+        try:
+            nltk.data.find("corpora/stopwords")
+        except LookupError:
+            nltk.download("stopwords")
 
         self.insert_cache_loop.start()