diff --git a/spring-kafka-docs/src/main/asciidoc/testing.adoc b/spring-kafka-docs/src/main/asciidoc/testing.adoc
index a3bb5a59..708fadf9 100644
--- a/spring-kafka-docs/src/main/asciidoc/testing.adoc
+++ b/spring-kafka-docs/src/main/asciidoc/testing.adoc
@@ -221,6 +221,7 @@ This could be a problem if, say, you run your tests in a Gradle daemon.
 You should not use this technique in such a situation, or you should use something to call `destroy()` on the `EmbeddedKafkaBroker` when your tests are complete.
 
 Starting with version 3.0, the framework exposes a `GlobalEmbeddedKafkaTestExecutionListener` for the JUnit Platform; it is disabled by default.
+This requires JUnit Platform 1.8 or greater.
 The purpose of this listener is to start one global `EmbeddedKafkaBroker` for the whole test plan and stop it at the end of the plan.
 To enable this listener, and therefore have a single global embedded Kafka cluster for all the tests in the project, the `spring.kafka.global.embedded.enabled` property must be set to `true` via system properties or JUnit Platform configuration.
 In addition, these properties can be provided:
diff --git a/spring-kafka-test/src/main/java/org/springframework/kafka/test/junit/GlobalEmbeddedKafkaTestExecutionListener.java b/spring-kafka-test/src/main/java/org/springframework/kafka/test/junit/GlobalEmbeddedKafkaTestExecutionListener.java
index 203850a1..1d6f9cff 100644
--- a/spring-kafka-test/src/main/java/org/springframework/kafka/test/junit/GlobalEmbeddedKafkaTestExecutionListener.java
+++ b/spring-kafka-test/src/main/java/org/springframework/kafka/test/junit/GlobalEmbeddedKafkaTestExecutionListener.java
@@ -43,6 +43,7 @@ import org.springframework.util.StringUtils;
  * to enable it.
  *
  * @author Artem Bilan
+ * @author Gary Russell
  *
  * @since 3.0
  */
@@ -84,10 +85,27 @@ public class GlobalEmbeddedKafkaTestExecutionListener implements TestExecutionLi
 	public static final String BROKER_PROPERTIES_LOCATION_PROPERTY_NAME =
 			"spring.kafka.embedded.broker.properties.location";
 
+	private static final boolean JUNIT_PLATFORM_COMPATIBLE;
+
+	static {
+		boolean compat = false;
+		try {
+			TestPlan.class.getDeclaredMethod("getConfigurationParameters");
+			compat = true;
+		}
+		catch (NoSuchMethodException | SecurityException e) {
+			LOGGER.debug("JUnit Platform version must be >= 1.8 to use a global embedded kafka server");
+		}
+		JUNIT_PLATFORM_COMPATIBLE = compat;
+	}
+
 	private EmbeddedKafkaBroker embeddedKafkaBroker;
 
 	@Override
 	public void testPlanExecutionStarted(TestPlan testPlan) {
+		if (!JUNIT_PLATFORM_COMPATIBLE) {
+			return;
+		}
 		ConfigurationParameters configurationParameters = testPlan.getConfigurationParameters();
 		boolean enabled = configurationParameters.getBoolean(LISTENER_ENABLED_PROPERTY_NAME).orElse(false);
 		if (enabled) {