diff --git a/hbase-server/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/compactions/TestFIFOCompactionPolicy.java b/hbase-server/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/compactions/TestFIFOCompactionPolicy.java
index 36afd84e790..9fee333966f 100644
--- a/hbase-server/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/compactions/TestFIFOCompactionPolicy.java
+++ b/hbase-server/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/compactions/TestFIFOCompactionPolicy.java
@@ -122,6 +122,11 @@ public class TestFIFOCompactionPolicy {
     EnvironmentEdgeManager.injectEdge(ee);
     Configuration conf = TEST_UTIL.getConfiguration();
     conf.setInt(HStore.BLOCKING_STOREFILES_KEY, 10000);
+    // Expired store file deletion during compaction optimization interferes with the FIFO
+    // compaction policy. The race causes changes to in-flight-compaction files resulting in a
+    // non-deterministic number of files selected by compaction policy. Disables that optimization
+    // for this test run.
+    conf.setBoolean("hbase.store.delete.expired.storefile", false);
     TEST_UTIL.startMiniCluster(1);
   }