diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 38d47b92..743b7100 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@
 - Fix: W&B integration respects WANDB_ARTIFACT_DIR. In addition, new env var WANDB_CACHE_SKIP controls cache use.
 - Dropped support for S3 storages without proper SSL certificates.
 - Added support for W&B artifacts on local storage which don't need to be downloaded and may be earlier available.
+- Hardcoded a date in template formatting application for consistency in eval results.
 
 ## 0.2.2
 
diff --git a/src/template_formatting/formatter.py b/src/template_formatting/formatter.py
index ccf5a206..555c9ce2 100644
--- a/src/template_formatting/formatter.py
+++ b/src/template_formatting/formatter.py
@@ -323,6 +323,11 @@ def format(  # type: ignore[override]
                     "continue_final_message": is_prefill,
                 }
             )
+        if "date_string" not in template_kwargs:
+            # some templates are forcing a date_string, harcoding one here for consistency in evaluations, e.g.
+            # https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/main/src/transformers/models/llama4/processing_llama4.py
+            # template_kwargs["date_string"] = "26 Jul 2024"
+            template_kwargs["date_string"] = "unknown"
 
         return self.tokenizer.apply_chat_template(hf_chat, **template_kwargs)