diff --git a/openstack_releases/cmds/validate.py b/openstack_releases/cmds/validate.py
index 47ec762327..0f4ce29cb3 100644
--- a/openstack_releases/cmds/validate.py
+++ b/openstack_releases/cmds/validate.py
@@ -1774,8 +1774,9 @@ def main():
             validate_model,
             validate_release_type,
             validate_pypi_permissions,
-            validate_pypi_readme,
             validate_build_sdist,
+            # Check readme after sdist build to slightly optimize things
+            validate_pypi_readme,
             validate_gitreview,
             validate_release_sha_exists,
             validate_existing_tags,
diff --git a/openstack_releases/pythonutils.py b/openstack_releases/pythonutils.py
index c979b2b5ff..008876b9a2 100644
--- a/openstack_releases/pythonutils.py
+++ b/openstack_releases/pythonutils.py
@@ -94,10 +94,16 @@ def check_readme_format(workdir, repo):
         LOG.debug('did not find %s, maybe %s is not a python project',
                   setup_path, repo)
         return None
+
+    # Check if the sdist build has been done
+    build_path = os.path.join(dest, 'dist')
+    if not os.path.exists(build_path):
+        build_sdist(workdir, repo)
+
     # NOTE(dhellmann): This relies on validate being run via tox so
-    # that python3 is present and the docutils package is installed.
+    # that python3 is present and the twine package is installed.
     processutils.check_call(
-        ['python3', 'setup.py', 'check', '--restructuredtext', '--strict'],
+        ['twine', 'check', os.path.join(build_path, '*')],
         cwd=dest,
     )
 
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index d1f8e24c09..eb03241912 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -21,6 +21,7 @@ prompt_toolkit>=2.0.7
 tqdm
 mwclient==0.8.1
 jsonschema>=2.6.0
+twine>=1.13.0
 
 # For release notes generation.
 Jinja2>=2.6  # BSD License (3 clause)