diff --git a/vllm/config/parallel.py b/vllm/config/parallel.py
index 8ec6af2aa..10a9cd9a5 100644
--- a/vllm/config/parallel.py
+++ b/vllm/config/parallel.py
@@ -234,9 +234,15 @@ class ParallelConfig:
     """distributed node rank for multi-node distributed 
     inference when distributed_executor_backend is mp."""
     nnodes: int = 1
-    """num of nodes for multi-node distributed 
+    """num of nodes for multi-node distributed
     inference when distributed_executor_backend is mp."""
 
+    distributed_timeout_seconds: int | None = None
+    """Timeout in seconds for distributed operations (e.g., init_process_group).
+    If set, this value is passed to torch.distributed.init_process_group as the
+    timeout parameter. If None, PyTorch's default timeout is used (600s for NCCL).
+    Increase this for multi-node setups where model downloads may be slow."""
+
     world_size: int = Field(init=False)
     """world_size is TPxPP, it affects the number of workers we create."""
 
diff --git a/vllm/engine/arg_utils.py b/vllm/engine/arg_utils.py
index 93384fd78..50654793f 100644
--- a/vllm/engine/arg_utils.py
+++ b/vllm/engine/arg_utils.py
@@ -403,6 +403,7 @@ class EngineArgs:
     master_port: int = ParallelConfig.master_port
     nnodes: int = ParallelConfig.nnodes
     node_rank: int = ParallelConfig.node_rank
+    distributed_timeout_seconds: int | None = ParallelConfig.distributed_timeout_seconds
     tensor_parallel_size: int = ParallelConfig.tensor_parallel_size
     prefill_context_parallel_size: int = ParallelConfig.prefill_context_parallel_size
     decode_context_parallel_size: int = ParallelConfig.decode_context_parallel_size
@@ -814,6 +815,10 @@ class EngineArgs:
         parallel_group.add_argument("--master-port", **parallel_kwargs["master_port"])
         parallel_group.add_argument("--nnodes", "-n", **parallel_kwargs["nnodes"])
         parallel_group.add_argument("--node-rank", "-r", **parallel_kwargs["node_rank"])
+        parallel_group.add_argument(
+            "--distributed-timeout-seconds",
+            **parallel_kwargs["distributed_timeout_seconds"],
+        )
         parallel_group.add_argument(
             "--tensor-parallel-size", "-tp", **parallel_kwargs["tensor_parallel_size"]
         )
@@ -1701,6 +1706,7 @@ class EngineArgs:
             master_port=self.master_port,
             nnodes=self.nnodes,
             node_rank=self.node_rank,
+            distributed_timeout_seconds=self.distributed_timeout_seconds,
             data_parallel_master_ip=data_parallel_address,
             data_parallel_rpc_port=data_parallel_rpc_port,
             data_parallel_backend=self.data_parallel_backend,
diff --git a/vllm/v1/worker/gpu_worker.py b/vllm/v1/worker/gpu_worker.py
index 10e9f2f49..99efe6057 100644
--- a/vllm/v1/worker/gpu_worker.py
+++ b/vllm/v1/worker/gpu_worker.py
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@ import gc
 import os
 from collections.abc import Callable
 from contextlib import AbstractContextManager, nullcontext
+from datetime import timedelta
 from types import NoneType
 from typing import TYPE_CHECKING, Any
 
@@ -942,8 +943,18 @@ def init_worker_distributed_environment(
     set_custom_all_reduce(not parallel_config.disable_custom_all_reduce)
 
     init_method = distributed_init_method or "env://"
+
+    timeout = None
+    if parallel_config.distributed_timeout_seconds is not None:
+        timeout = timedelta(seconds=parallel_config.distributed_timeout_seconds)
+
     init_distributed_environment(
-        parallel_config.world_size, rank, init_method, local_rank, backend
+        parallel_config.world_size,
+        rank,
+        init_method,
+        local_rank,
+        backend,
+        timeout,
     )
 
     ensure_model_parallel_initialized(