diff --git a/apps/sft/main.py b/apps/sft/main.py
index edda0b49d..93ba05eed 100644
--- a/apps/sft/main.py
+++ b/apps/sft/main.py
@@ -154,6 +154,15 @@ def setup_data(self):
             generation_config_path=os.path.join(
                 self.job_config.model.hf_assets_path, "generation_config.json"
             ),
+            chat_template_path=(
+                path
+                if os.path.exists(
+                    path := os.path.join(
+                        self.job_config.model.hf_assets_path, "chat_template.jinja"
+                    )
+                )
+                else None
+            ),
         )
 
         dataset = sft_iterable_dataset(
diff --git a/src/forge/data/tokenizer.py b/src/forge/data/tokenizer.py
index 65407e131..9b0f4cf64 100644
--- a/src/forge/data/tokenizer.py
+++ b/src/forge/data/tokenizer.py
@@ -215,8 +215,8 @@ class HuggingFaceModelTokenizer(ModelTokenizer):
     Args:
         tokenizer_json_path (str): Path to tokenizer.json file
         tokenizer_config_json_path (str | None): Path to tokenizer_config.json file. Default: None
-        generation_config_path (str | None): Path to generation_config.json file.
-            Default: None
+        generation_config_path (str | None): Path to generation_config.json file. Default: None
+        chat_template_path (str | None): Path to chat_template.jinja file. Default: None
         truncation_type (str): type of truncation to apply, either "left" or "right".
             Default is "right".
     """
@@ -227,6 +227,7 @@ def __init__(
         *,
         tokenizer_config_json_path: str | None = None,
         generation_config_path: str | None = None,
+        chat_template_path: str | None = None,
         truncation_type: str = "right",
     ):
         self.base_tokenizer = HuggingFaceBaseTokenizer(
@@ -245,7 +246,13 @@ def __init__(
 
         # It is used sometimes in HF chat_templates
         _env.globals["raise_exception"] = self._raise_helper
-        self.template = _env.from_string(config["chat_template"])
+
+        if chat_template_path:
+            with open(chat_template_path, "r") as f:
+                self.template = _env.from_string(f.read())
+        else:
+            self.template = _env.from_string(config["chat_template"])
+
         self.truncation_type = truncation_type
 
         self.special_tokens_mapping = {}