diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 7abd7a96f..9cd96ac2d 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ requires = [
     "cymem>=2.0.2,<2.1.0",
     "preshed>=3.0.2,<3.1.0",
     "murmurhash>=0.28.0,<1.1.0",
-    "thinc>=8.1.0,<8.2.0",
+    "thinc>=8.1.8,<8.2.0",
     "numpy>=1.15.0",
 ]
 build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index bc9fc183c..63e03d558 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ spacy-legacy>=3.0.11,<3.1.0
 spacy-loggers>=1.0.0,<2.0.0
 cymem>=2.0.2,<2.1.0
 preshed>=3.0.2,<3.1.0
-thinc>=8.1.0,<8.2.0
+thinc>=8.1.8,<8.2.0
 ml_datasets>=0.2.0,<0.3.0
 murmurhash>=0.28.0,<1.1.0
 wasabi>=0.9.1,<1.2.0
diff --git a/setup.cfg b/setup.cfg
index cddc5148c..27499805b 100644
--- a/setup.cfg
+++ b/setup.cfg
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ setup_requires =
     cymem>=2.0.2,<2.1.0
     preshed>=3.0.2,<3.1.0
     murmurhash>=0.28.0,<1.1.0
-    thinc>=8.1.0,<8.2.0
+    thinc>=8.1.8,<8.2.0
 install_requires =
     # Our libraries
     spacy-legacy>=3.0.11,<3.1.0
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ install_requires =
     murmurhash>=0.28.0,<1.1.0
     cymem>=2.0.2,<2.1.0
     preshed>=3.0.2,<3.1.0
-    thinc>=8.1.0,<8.2.0
+    thinc>=8.1.8,<8.2.0
     wasabi>=0.9.1,<1.2.0
     srsly>=2.4.3,<3.0.0
     catalogue>=2.0.6,<2.1.0
diff --git a/spacy/cli/templates/quickstart_training.jinja b/spacy/cli/templates/quickstart_training.jinja
index b961ac892..441189341 100644
--- a/spacy/cli/templates/quickstart_training.jinja
+++ b/spacy/cli/templates/quickstart_training.jinja
@@ -24,8 +24,11 @@ gpu_allocator = null
 lang = "{{ lang }}"
 {%- set has_textcat = ("textcat" in components or "textcat_multilabel" in components) -%}
 {%- set with_accuracy = optimize == "accuracy" -%}
-{%- set has_accurate_textcat = has_textcat and with_accuracy -%}
-{%- if ("tagger" in components or "morphologizer" in components or "parser" in components or "ner" in components or "spancat" in components or "trainable_lemmatizer" in components or "entity_linker" in components or has_accurate_textcat) -%}
+{# The BOW textcat doesn't need a source of features, so it can omit the
+tok2vec/transformer. #}
+{%- set with_accuracy_or_transformer = (use_transformer or with_accuracy) -%}
+{%- set textcat_needs_features = has_textcat and with_accuracy_or_transformer -%}
+{%- if ("tagger" in components or "morphologizer" in components or "parser" in components or "ner" in components or "spancat" in components or "trainable_lemmatizer" in components or "entity_linker" in components or textcat_needs_features) -%}
 {%- set full_pipeline = ["transformer" if use_transformer else "tok2vec"] + components -%}
 {%- else -%}
 {%- set full_pipeline = components -%}
@@ -221,10 +224,16 @@ no_output_layer = false
 
 {% else -%}
 [components.textcat.model]
-@architectures = "spacy.TextCatBOW.v2"
+@architectures = "spacy.TextCatCNN.v2"
 exclusive_classes = true
-ngram_size = 1
-no_output_layer = false
+nO = null
+
+[components.textcat.model.tok2vec]
+@architectures = "spacy-transformers.TransformerListener.v1"
+grad_factor = 1.0
+
+[components.textcat.model.tok2vec.pooling]
+@layers = "reduce_mean.v1"
 {%- endif %}
 {%- endif %}
 
@@ -252,10 +261,16 @@ no_output_layer = false
 
 {% else -%}
 [components.textcat_multilabel.model]
-@architectures = "spacy.TextCatBOW.v2"
+@architectures = "spacy.TextCatCNN.v2"
 exclusive_classes = false
-ngram_size = 1
-no_output_layer = false
+nO = null
+
+[components.textcat_multilabel.model.tok2vec]
+@architectures = "spacy-transformers.TransformerListener.v1"
+grad_factor = 1.0
+
+[components.textcat_multilabel.model.tok2vec.pooling]
+@layers = "reduce_mean.v1"
 {%- endif %}
 {%- endif %}