diff --git a/annif/analyzer/simplemma.py b/annif/analyzer/simplemma.py
index 6bd81a779..61b5dc166 100644
--- a/annif/analyzer/simplemma.py
+++ b/annif/analyzer/simplemma.py
@@ -1,6 +1,5 @@
 """Simplemma analyzer for Annif, based on simplemma lemmatizer."""
 
-import functools
 import simplemma
 from . import analyzer
 
@@ -12,6 +11,5 @@ def __init__(self, param, **kwargs):
         self.lang = param
         super().__init__(**kwargs)
 
-    @functools.lru_cache(maxsize=500000)
     def _normalize_word(self, word):
         return simplemma.lemmatize(word, self.lang)
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 3d279f3b1..9aee9e564 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ def read(fname):
         'stwfsapy==0.3.*',
         'python-dateutil',
         'tomli==2.0.*',
-        'simplemma==0.7.*'
+        'simplemma==0.8.*'
     ],
     tests_require=['py', 'pytest', 'requests'],
     extras_require={