diff --git a/devstack/upgrade/settings b/devstack/upgrade/settings
index e8198be49..28abebd50 100644
--- a/devstack/upgrade/settings
+++ b/devstack/upgrade/settings
@@ -9,3 +9,10 @@ devstack_localrc target enable_service watcher-api watcher-decision-engine watch
 
 BASE_RUN_SMOKE=False
 TARGET_RUN_SMOKE=False
+
+# Enable both versioned and unversioned notifications. Watcher only
+# uses versioned notifications but ceilometer uses unversioned. We
+# can change this to just versioned when ceilometer handles
+# versioned notifications from nova:
+# https://bugs.launchpad.net/ceilometer/+bug/1665449
+devstack_localrc base NOVA_NOTIFICATION_FORMAT=both