diff --git a/conf/packages b/conf/packages
index caec25e..272ae0e 100644
--- a/conf/packages
+++ b/conf/packages
@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
 postgresql-client
 memcached
 virtualenv
-libapache2-mod-wsgi
-python-dev
+libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3
 python3-dev
 libgdal-dev
diff --git a/conf/pre_deploy_actions.bash b/conf/pre_deploy_actions.bash
index 2179bfd..1e9a577 100755
--- a/conf/pre_deploy_actions.bash
+++ b/conf/pre_deploy_actions.bash
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ cd "$(dirname $BASH_SOURCE)"/..
 PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=""
 
 # create the virtual environment
-virtualenv_args=""
+virtualenv_args="--python python3"
 virtualenv_dir='.venv'
 virtualenv_activate="$virtualenv_dir/bin/activate"