diff --git a/pageserver/src/tenant/mgr.rs b/pageserver/src/tenant/mgr.rs
index 0cf5c36b87..74faee1115 100644
--- a/pageserver/src/tenant/mgr.rs
+++ b/pageserver/src/tenant/mgr.rs
@@ -503,6 +503,8 @@ pub enum GetTenantError {
 
 /// Gets the tenant from the in-memory data, erroring if it's absent or is not fitting to the query.
 /// `active_only = true` allows to query only tenants that are ready for operations, erroring on other kinds of tenants.
+///
+/// This method is cancel-safe.
 pub async fn get_tenant(
     tenant_id: TenantId,
     active_only: bool,
diff --git a/pageserver/src/tenant/timeline/eviction_task.rs b/pageserver/src/tenant/timeline/eviction_task.rs
index 3e407dda57..39f0d03a01 100644
--- a/pageserver/src/tenant/timeline/eviction_task.rs
+++ b/pageserver/src/tenant/timeline/eviction_task.rs
@@ -328,9 +328,24 @@ impl Timeline {
         // Make one of the tenant's timelines draw the short straw and run the calculation.
         // The others wait until the calculation is done so that they take into account the
         // imitated accesses that the winner made.
-        let Ok(tenant) = crate::tenant::mgr::get_tenant(self.tenant_id, true).await else {
-            // likely, we're shutting down
-            return ControlFlow::Break(());
+        //
+        // It is critical we are responsive to cancellation here. Otherwise, we deadlock with
+        // tenant deletion (holds TENANTS in read mode) any other task that attempts to
+        // acquire TENANTS in write mode before we here call get_tenant.
+        // See https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/issues/5284.
+        let res = tokio::select! {
+            _ = cancel.cancelled() => {
+                return ControlFlow::Break(());
+            }
+            res = crate::tenant::mgr::get_tenant(self.tenant_id, true) => {
+                res
+            }
+        };
+        let tenant = match res {
+            Ok(t) => t,
+            Err(_) => {
+                return ControlFlow::Break(());
+            }
         };
         let mut state = tenant.eviction_task_tenant_state.lock().await;
         match state.last_layer_access_imitation {