diff --git a/conversion/base.py b/conversion/base.py
index 5561481e77..221aa8093b 100644
--- a/conversion/base.py
+++ b/conversion/base.py
@@ -2326,6 +2326,12 @@ class TextModel(ModelBase):
                 raise NotImplementedError("Only MEAN, CLS, and LAST pooling types supported")
             self.gguf_writer.add_pooling_type(pooling_type)
 
+        # pooling before a classification head (e.g. ModernBertForSequenceClassification)
+        if (classifier_pooling := self.hparams.get("classifier_pooling")) is not None:
+            if classifier_pooling not in ("cls", "mean"):
+                raise NotImplementedError(f"Unsupported classifier_pooling: {classifier_pooling}")
+            self.gguf_writer.add_classifier_pooling_type(mode_mapping[classifier_pooling])
+
     def _set_vocab_glmedge(self):
         from transformers import AutoTokenizer
         tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(self.dir_model)
diff --git a/gguf-py/gguf/constants.py b/gguf-py/gguf/constants.py
index 9a7a5e5bfa..e193e99957 100644
--- a/gguf-py/gguf/constants.py
+++ b/gguf-py/gguf/constants.py
@@ -313,6 +313,7 @@ class Keys:
 
     class Classifier:
         OUTPUT_LABELS = "{arch}.classifier.output_labels"
+        POOLING_TYPE  = "{arch}.classifier.pooling_type"
 
     class ShortConv:
         L_CACHE = "{arch}.shortconv.l_cache"
diff --git a/gguf-py/gguf/gguf_writer.py b/gguf-py/gguf/gguf_writer.py
index cf7b367e52..543d9b744c 100644
--- a/gguf-py/gguf/gguf_writer.py
+++ b/gguf-py/gguf/gguf_writer.py
@@ -1331,6 +1331,9 @@ class GGUFWriter:
     def add_classifier_output_labels(self, labels: Sequence[str]) -> None:
         self.add_array(Keys.Classifier.OUTPUT_LABELS.format(arch=self.arch), labels)
 
+    def add_classifier_pooling_type(self, value: PoolingType) -> None:
+        self.add_uint32(Keys.Classifier.POOLING_TYPE.format(arch=self.arch), value.value)
+
     # for vision models
 
     def add_clip_has_vision_encoder(self, value: bool) -> None:
diff --git a/src/llama-arch.cpp b/src/llama-arch.cpp
index 8f1e239dae..2c5a228f35 100644
--- a/src/llama-arch.cpp
+++ b/src/llama-arch.cpp
@@ -361,6 +361,7 @@ static const std::map<llm_kv, const char *> LLM_KV_NAMES = {
     { LLM_KV_CONVNEXT_BLOCK_COUNT,      "%s.convnext.block_count"      },
 
     { LLM_KV_CLASSIFIER_OUTPUT_LABELS, "%s.classifier.output_labels" },
+    { LLM_KV_CLASSIFIER_POOLING_TYPE,  "%s.classifier.pooling_type"  },
 
     { LLM_KV_TARGET_LAYERS,         "%s.target_layers"        },
     { LLM_KV_TARGET_HIDDEN_SIZE,    "%s.target_hidden_size"   },
diff --git a/src/llama-arch.h b/src/llama-arch.h
index 23b6b38100..3b8bd64287 100644
--- a/src/llama-arch.h
+++ b/src/llama-arch.h
@@ -407,6 +407,7 @@ enum llm_kv {
     LLM_KV_CONVNEXT_BLOCK_COUNT,
 
     LLM_KV_CLASSIFIER_OUTPUT_LABELS,
+    LLM_KV_CLASSIFIER_POOLING_TYPE,
 
     LLM_KV_TARGET_LAYERS,
     LLM_KV_TARGET_HIDDEN_SIZE,
diff --git a/src/llama-graph.cpp b/src/llama-graph.cpp
index a806126efa..abf3069bbc 100644
--- a/src/llama-graph.cpp
+++ b/src/llama-graph.cpp
@@ -3727,8 +3727,8 @@ void llm_graph_context::build_pooling(
             } break;
         case LLAMA_POOLING_TYPE_RANK:
             {
-                if (arch == LLM_ARCH_MODERN_BERT) {
-                    // modern bert gte reranker builds mean first then applies prediction head and classifier
+                if (hparams.pooling_type_cls == LLAMA_POOLING_TYPE_MEAN) {
+                    // modern bert with classifier_pooling = "mean" builds mean first then applies prediction head and classifier
                     // https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/main/src/transformers/models/modernbert/modular_modernbert.py#L1404-1411
                     ggml_tensor * inp_mean = build_inp_mean();
                     cur = ggml_mul_mat(ctx0, ggml_cont(ctx0, ggml_transpose(ctx0, inp)), inp_mean);
diff --git a/src/llama-hparams.h b/src/llama-hparams.h
index 73dffcc9f7..d8fbfbdd8a 100644
--- a/src/llama-hparams.h
+++ b/src/llama-hparams.h
@@ -350,6 +350,7 @@ struct llama_hparams {
     uint32_t    dec_n_layer        = 0;
 
     enum llama_pooling_type      pooling_type            = LLAMA_POOLING_TYPE_NONE;
+    enum llama_pooling_type      pooling_type_cls        = LLAMA_POOLING_TYPE_UNSPECIFIED; // pooling before the classifier head (RANK)
     enum llama_rope_type         rope_type               = LLAMA_ROPE_TYPE_NONE;
     enum llama_rope_scaling_type rope_scaling_type_train = LLAMA_ROPE_SCALING_TYPE_NONE;
 
diff --git a/src/llama-model.cpp b/src/llama-model.cpp
index ab5e744b5d..151a3a2a89 100644
--- a/src/llama-model.cpp
+++ b/src/llama-model.cpp
@@ -1320,6 +1320,7 @@ void llama_model_base::load_hparams(llama_model_loader & ml) {
     ml.get_key(LLM_KV_EMBEDDING_LENGTH_OUT,    hparams.n_embd_out_impl, false);
     ml.get_key(LLM_KV_ATTENTION_CAUSAL,        hparams.causal_attn,     false);
     ml.get_key(LLM_KV_POOLING_TYPE,            hparams.pooling_type,    false);
+    ml.get_key(LLM_KV_CLASSIFIER_POOLING_TYPE, hparams.pooling_type_cls, false);
     ml.get_key(LLM_KV_BLOCK_COUNT,             hparams.n_layer_all);
     GGML_ASSERT(hparams.n_layer_all > 0 && hparams.n_layer_all <= LLAMA_MAX_LAYERS);
     ml.get_key(LLM_KV_NEXTN_PREDICT_LAYERS,    hparams.n_layer_nextn,   false);
diff --git a/src/models/modern-bert.cpp b/src/models/modern-bert.cpp
index b7542d59bd..158e3160c5 100644
--- a/src/models/modern-bert.cpp
+++ b/src/models/modern-bert.cpp
@@ -20,6 +20,11 @@ void llama_model_modern_bert::load_arch_hparams(llama_model_loader & ml) {
         hparams.llm_ffn_op = llm_ffn_op_type_from_string(hidden_act, LLM_FFN_GEGLU);
     }
 
+    // GGUFs without a classifier pooling type use mean (gte-reranker-modernbert-base)
+    if (hparams.pooling_type_cls == LLAMA_POOLING_TYPE_UNSPECIFIED) {
+        hparams.pooling_type_cls = LLAMA_POOLING_TYPE_MEAN;
+    }
+
     switch (hparams.n_layer()) {
         case 12:
             type = LLM_TYPE_47M; break; // granite-embedding-small