diff --git a/bindings/python/CMakeLists.txt b/bindings/python/CMakeLists.txt
index 0b9b3ebe7..74e608901 100644
--- a/bindings/python/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/bindings/python/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
 # To build python bindings we need a python executable and boost python module. Unfortunately,
 # their names might not be interlinked and we can not implement a general solution.
-# The code below assumes default boost installation, when the module for python 2 is named
-# 'python' and the module for python 3 is named 'python3'.
+# The code below assumes default boost installation, when the module for python 3 is named 'python3'.
 # To customize that one can provide a name for the Boost::python module via
 # 'boost-python-module-name' variable when invoking cmake.
 # E.g. on Gentoo with python 3.6 and Boost::python library name 'libboost_python-3.6.so'
@@ -15,12 +14,9 @@
 # Sets _ret to a list of python versions (major.minor) that use the same MSVC runtime as this build does
 # assumes MSVC was detected already
 # See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_C++#Internal_version_numbering
+# See https://devguide.python.org/#status-of-python-branches for supported python versions
 function(_get_compatible_python_versions _ret)
-	if (CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_VERSION VERSION_GREATER_EQUAL 15 AND CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_VERSION VERSION_LESS 16)
-		list(APPEND _tmp 2.6 2.7 3.0 3.1 3.2)
-	elseif(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_VERSION VERSION_GREATER_EQUAL 16 AND CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_VERSION VERSION_LESS 17)
-		list(APPEND _tmp 3.3 3.4)
-	elseif(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_VERSION VERSION_GREATER_EQUAL 19 AND CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_VERSION VERSION_LESS 20)
+	if(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_VERSION VERSION_GREATER_EQUAL 19 AND CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_VERSION VERSION_LESS 20)
 		list(APPEND _tmp 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8)
 	endif()
 	set(${_ret} ${_tmp} PARENT_SCOPE)
@@ -31,31 +27,26 @@ if (CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ID MATCHES "MSVC" AND NOT skip-python-runtime-test)
 	_get_compatible_python_versions(Python_ADDITIONAL_VERSIONS)
 endif()
 
-find_package(PythonInterp REQUIRED)
+find_package(Python3 COMPONENTS Interpreter Development REQUIRED)
 if (CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ID MATCHES "MSVC" AND NOT skip-python-runtime-test)
-	message(STATUS "Testing found python version. Requested: ${Python_ADDITIONAL_VERSIONS}, found: ${PYTHON_VERSION_MAJOR}.${PYTHON_VERSION_MINOR}")
-	if (NOT "${PYTHON_VERSION_MAJOR}.${PYTHON_VERSION_MINOR}" IN_LIST Python_ADDITIONAL_VERSIONS)
-		message(FATAL_ERROR "Incompatible Python and C runtime: MSVC ${CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_VERSION} and Python ${PYTHON_VERSION_STRING}")
+	message(STATUS "Testing found python version. Requested: ${Python_ADDITIONAL_VERSIONS}, found: ${Python3_VERSION_MAJOR}.${Python3_VERSION_MINOR}")
+	if (NOT "${Python3_VERSION_MAJOR}.${Python3_VERSION_MINOR}" IN_LIST Python_ADDITIONAL_VERSIONS)
+		message(FATAL_ERROR "Incompatible Python and C runtime: MSVC ${CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_VERSION} and Python ${Python3_VERSION}")
 	endif()
 endif()
 
-set(Python_ADDITIONAL_VERSIONS "${PYTHON_VERSION_MAJOR}.${PYTHON_VERSION_MINOR}")
-find_package(PythonLibs REQUIRED)
+set(Python_ADDITIONAL_VERSIONS "${Python3_VERSION_MAJOR}.${Python3_VERSION_MINOR}")
 
 if (NOT boost-python-module-name)
 	# use active python
-	if (PYTHON_VERSION_STRING VERSION_GREATER_EQUAL "3")
-		set(_boost-python-module-name "python${PYTHON_VERSION_MAJOR}")
-	else()
-		set(_boost-python-module-name "python") # to overwrite possible value from a previous run
-	endif()
+	set(_boost-python-module-name "python${Python3_VERSION_MAJOR}")
 endif()
 
 set(boost-python-module-name ${_boost-python-module-name} CACHE STRING "Boost:python module name, e.g. 'pythom-3.6'")
 
 find_package(Boost REQUIRED COMPONENTS ${boost-python-module-name})
 
-python_add_module(python-libtorrent
+Python3_add_library(python-libtorrent STATIC
 	src/module.cpp
 	src/sha1_hash.cpp
 	src/converters.cpp
@@ -80,12 +71,12 @@ python_add_module(python-libtorrent
 
 set_target_properties(python-libtorrent
 	PROPERTIES
-		OUTPUT_NAME libtorrent
+		OUTPUT_NAME torrent
 )
 
 target_include_directories(python-libtorrent
 	PRIVATE
-		${PYTHON_INCLUDE_DIRS}
+		${Python3_INCLUDE_DIRS}
 )
 
 string(TOUPPER "${boost-python-module-name}" boost_python_module_name_uppercase)
@@ -96,7 +87,7 @@ target_link_libraries(python-libtorrent
 		# Boost::python adds that but without a path to the library. Therefore we have to either
 		# provide the path (but, unfortunately, FindPythonLibs.cmake does not return the library dir),
 		# or give the full file name here (this FindPythonLibs.cmake provides to us).
-		${PYTHON_LIBRARIES}
+		${Python3_LIBRARIES}
 )
 
 # Bindings module uses deprecated libtorrent features, thus we disable these warnings
@@ -108,7 +99,7 @@ if (CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ID MATCHES "GNU|Clang")
 endif()
 
 execute_process(COMMAND
-  ${PYTHON_EXECUTABLE} -c "import distutils.sysconfig;
+  ${Python3_EXECUTABLE} -c "import distutils.sysconfig;
 print(';'.join(map(str, [
 	distutils.sysconfig.get_python_lib(plat_specific=True, prefix=''),
 	distutils.sysconfig.get_config_var('EXT_SUFFIX')
@@ -119,13 +110,11 @@ list(GET _python_sysconfig_vars 0 PYTHON_SITE_PACKAGES)
 list(GET _python_sysconfig_vars 1 PYTHON_EXT_SUFFIX)
 
 message(STATUS "Python site packages: ${PYTHON_SITE_PACKAGES}")
-# python 2 does not provide the 'EXT_SUFFIX' sysconfig variable, so we use cmake default then
-if (NOT "${PYTHON_EXT_SUFFIX}" STREQUAL "None")
-	message(STATUS "Python extension suffix: ${PYTHON_EXT_SUFFIX}")
-	# we mimic the name, created by setuptools
-	# example: libtorrent.cpython-36m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so
-	set_target_properties(python-libtorrent PROPERTIES SUFFIX ${PYTHON_EXT_SUFFIX})
-endif()
+
+message(STATUS "Python extension suffix: ${PYTHON_EXT_SUFFIX}")
+# we mimic the name, created by setuptools
+# example: libtorrent.cpython-36m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so
+set_target_properties(python-libtorrent PROPERTIES SUFFIX ${PYTHON_EXT_SUFFIX})
 
 set(SETUP_PY_IN "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/setup.py.cmake.in")
 set(SETUP_PY    "${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/setup.py")
@@ -135,8 +124,8 @@ set(DEPS        python-libtorrent "${SETUP_PY}")
 configure_file(${SETUP_PY_IN} ${SETUP_PY} @ONLY)
 
 add_custom_command(OUTPUT ${OUTPUT}
-                   COMMAND ${PYTHON_EXECUTABLE} ${SETUP_PY} build -b "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}"
-                   COMMAND ${PYTHON_EXECUTABLE} ${SETUP_PY} egg_info -b "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}"
+                   COMMAND ${Python3_EXECUTABLE} ${SETUP_PY} build -b "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}"
+                   COMMAND ${Python3_EXECUTABLE} ${SETUP_PY} egg_info -b "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}"
                    COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E touch ${OUTPUT}
                    DEPENDS ${DEPS})
 
