diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.yml b/.gitlab-ci.yml
index 7fa9ae495b3bc5e5fea1c699894b1c03e67d1120..26778bafd00bc47e060e8cc7111d8a686088d3c2 100644
--- a/.gitlab-ci.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.yml
@@ -5,14 +5,16 @@ check_branch_name:
   stage: validate
   script: |
     echo "🔍 Validating branch name: $CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME"
-    BRANCH_REGEX="^(regression|classification|clustering|ilp-classification|rl)/(svm|tree|mlp|perceptron|nb|bayes|kmeans|hierarchical|aleph|pygol|ql|dql|preprocessing)/(ritwik|arpit|shivasmi|ishwari|suraj)$"
+
+    # Allowed format: <task>/<model-or-preprocessing>/<author>[-optional-suffix]
+    BRANCH_REGEX="^(regression|classification|clustering|ilp-classification|rl)/(svm|tree|mlp|perceptron|nb|bayes|kmeans|hierarchical|aleph|pygol|ql|dql|preprocessing)/(ritwik|arpit|shivasmi|ishwari|suraj)(-[a-z0-9]+)?$"
 
     if [[ "$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME" =~ $BRANCH_REGEX ]]; then
       echo "✅ Branch name is valid."
     else
       echo "❌ Branch name is INVALID: '$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME'"
-      echo "👉 Expected format: <task>/<model-or-preprocessing>/<author>"
-      echo "👉 Example: classification/svm/ritwik"
+      echo "👉 Expected format: <task>/<model-or-preprocessing>/<author>[-optional-suffix]"
+      echo "👉 Example: classification/svm/ritwik or classification/preprocessing/ritwik-fix"
       exit 1
     fi
   only:
@@ -20,4 +22,5 @@ check_branch_name:
   except:
     - main
   tags:
-    - pages
\ No newline at end of file
+    - pages
+