diff --git a/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/r-sparsematrixstats/package.py b/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/r-sparsematrixstats/package.py
index a2d06b07e54..2fd4912a2e9 100644
--- a/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/r-sparsematrixstats/package.py
+++ b/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/r-sparsematrixstats/package.py
@@ -16,6 +16,14 @@ class RSparsematrixstats(RPackage):
 
     bioc = "sparseMatrixStats"
 
+    # The repository is at
+    # https://code.bioconductor.org/browse/sparseMatrixStats/, to find the
+    # commit hash check the branch corresponding to a BioConductor release and
+    # the latest commit (or one of the latest ones) should be the one bumping
+    # the r-sparsematrixstats version.
+    version("1.18.0", commit="172c63ee6c8fa200d2fda5546750ab5ac8ddd858")
+    version("1.16.0", commit="2ad650c393497263c20d67d45d1a56ee6fa3b402")
+    version("1.14.0", commit="2923a3bb4e59cf0e05f0e21a8e8df66e670c4abc")
     version("1.12.0", commit="054bf939cd7220deaf8e768ff7029d0d38483c91")
     version("1.10.0", commit="75d85ba2c9c4c36887fef1a007883167aa85bd94")
     version("1.8.0", commit="4f1e2213e5b0d6b3d817c2c9129b7566288916f6")
@@ -29,4 +37,7 @@ class RSparsematrixstats(RPackage):
     depends_on("r-rcpp", type=("build", "run"))
     depends_on("r-matrix", type=("build", "run"))
     depends_on("r-matrixstats", type=("build", "run"))
-    depends_on("r-matrixstats@0.60.0:", type=("build", "run"), when="@1.6.0:")
+    depends_on("r-matrixstats@0.60.0:0.63.0", type=("build", "run"), when="@1.6.0:1.12")
+    # r-sparsematrixstats 1.12- is incompatible with r-matrixstats v1:
+    # https://github.com/HenrikBengtsson/matrixStats/issues/227
+    depends_on("r-matrixstats@1:", type=("build", "run"), when="@1.13.0:")