diff --git a/.cirrus.yml b/.cirrus.yml
index d0bc81225e..3ede535a21 100644
--- a/.cirrus.yml
+++ b/.cirrus.yml
@@ -1090,7 +1090,9 @@ upgrade_test_task:
     depends_on: *build
     matrix:
         - env:
-              PODMAN_UPGRADE_FROM: v4.8.0
+              PODMAN_UPGRADE_FROM: v5.3.1
+        - env:
+              PODMAN_UPGRADE_FROM: v5.6.2
     gce_instance: *standardvm
     env:
         TEST_FLAVOR: upgrade_test
diff --git a/test/upgrade/README.md b/test/upgrade/README.md
index bd70a5f0be..c03667f811 100644
--- a/test/upgrade/README.md
+++ b/test/upgrade/README.md
@@ -21,22 +21,19 @@ container image from quay.io/podman, uses it to create and run
 a number of containers, then uses new-podman to interact with
 those containers.
 
-As of 2024-02-05 the available old-podman versions are:
+Testing updates from versions earlier than v5.3.1 fails. Testing updates from
+tags that do not respect semantic versioning fails too (e.g. v5.6.0-immutable or
+v5.6). As of 2025-11-18 the available old-podman versions to test against are:
 
 ```console
-$ bin/podman search --list-tags --limit=400 quay.io/podman/stable | awk '$2 ~ /^v/ { print $2}' | sort | column -c 75
-v1.4.2  v1.9.1  v3.2.0  v3.4.0  v4.1.0  v4.3.1  v4.5.1  v4.8
-v1.4.4  v2.0.2  v3.2.1  v3.4.1  v4.1.1  v4.4    v4.6    v4.8.0
-v1.5.0  v2.0.6  v3.2.2  v3.4.2  v4.2    v4.4.1  v4.6.1  v4.8.1
-v1.5.1  v2.1.1  v3.2.3  v3.4.4  v4.2.0  v4.4.2  v4.6.2  v4.8.2
-v1.6    v2.2.1  v3.3.0  v3.4.7  v4.2.1  v4.4.4  v4.7    v4.8.3
-v1.6.2  v3      v3.3.1  v4      v4.3    v4.5    v4.7.0  v4.9
-v1.9.0  v3.1.2  v3.4    v4.1    v4.3.0  v4.5.0  v4.7.2  v4.9.0
+$ bin/podman search --list-tags --limit=400 quay.io/podman/stable | awk '$2 ~ /^v[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+$/ { print $2}' | sort | awk '/v5.3.1/,0' | column -c 75
+v5.3.1  v5.4.0  v5.4.2  v5.5.1  v5.6.0  v5.6.2
+v5.3.2  v5.4.1  v5.5.0  v5.5.2  v5.6.1
 ```
 
 Test invocation is:
 ```console
-$ sudo env PODMAN=bin/podman PODMAN_UPGRADE_FROM=v4.1.0 PODMAN_UPGRADE_TEST_DEBUG= bats test/upgrade
+$ sudo env PODMAN=bin/podman PODMAN_UPGRADE_FROM=v5.3.1 PODMAN_UPGRADE_TEST_DEBUG= bats test/upgrade
 ```
 (Path assumes you're cd'ed to top-level podman repo). `PODMAN_UPGRADE_FROM`
 can be any of the versions above. `PODMAN_UPGRADE_TEST_DEBUG` is empty
diff --git a/test/upgrade/test-upgrade.bats b/test/upgrade/test-upgrade.bats
index df065db14f..fb892bbf5c 100644
--- a/test/upgrade/test-upgrade.bats
+++ b/test/upgrade/test-upgrade.bats
@@ -49,9 +49,9 @@ setup() {
     # the default c/storage behavior is to make the mount propagation private.
     export _PODMAN_TEST_OPTS="--storage-opt=skip_mount_home=true --cgroup-manager=cgroupfs --root=$PODMAN_UPGRADE_WORKDIR/root --runroot=$PODMAN_UPGRADE_WORKDIR/runroot --tmpdir=$PODMAN_UPGRADE_WORKDIR/tmp"
 
-    # Old netavark used iptables but newer versions might uses nftables.
-    # Networking can only work correctly if both use the same firewall driver so force iptables.
-    printf "[network]\nfirewall_driver=\"iptables\"\n" > $PODMAN_UPGRADE_WORKDIR/containers.conf
+
+    # Starting with v6.0.0 we only test upgrade from versions that support nftables.
+    printf "[network]\nfirewall_driver=\"nftables\"\n" > $PODMAN_UPGRADE_WORKDIR/containers.conf
     export CONTAINERS_CONF_OVERRIDE=$PODMAN_UPGRADE_WORKDIR/containers.conf
 }
 
@@ -64,21 +64,6 @@ setup() {
     OLD_PODMAN=quay.io/podman/stable:$PODMAN_UPGRADE_FROM
     $PODMAN pull $OLD_PODMAN
 
-    # Can't mix-and-match iptables.
-    # This can only fail when we bring in new CI VMs. If/when it does fail,
-    # we'll need to figure out how to solve it. Until then, punt.
-    iptables_old_version=$($PODMAN run --rm $OLD_PODMAN iptables -V)
-    run -0 expr "$iptables_old_version" : ".*(\(.*\))"
-    iptables_old_which="$output"
-
-    iptables_new_version=$(iptables -V)
-    run -0 expr "$iptables_new_version" : ".*(\(.*\))"
-    iptables_new_which="$output"
-
-    if [[ "$iptables_new_which" != "$iptables_old_which" ]]; then
-        die "Cannot mix iptables; $PODMAN_UPGRADE_FROM container uses $iptables_old_which, host uses $iptables_new_which"
-    fi
-
     # Shortcut name, because we're referencing it a lot
     pmroot=$PODMAN_UPGRADE_WORKDIR
 
@@ -223,8 +208,10 @@ EOF
 
 @test "images" {
     run_podman images -a --format '{{.Names}}'
-    assert "${lines[0]}" =~ "\[localhost/podman-pause:${PODMAN_UPGRADE_FROM##v}-.*\]" "podman images, line 0"
-    assert "${lines[1]}" = "[$IMAGE]" "podman images, line 1"
+    # Filter out the podman-pause image which isn't present for
+    # versions >= 5.5.0
+    run -0 grep -v "localhost/podman-pause" <<< "$output"
+    assert "${lines[0]}" = "[$IMAGE]" "podman images, line 0"
 }
 
 @test "ps : one container running" {