diff --git a/vllm/config/model.py b/vllm/config/model.py
index 84311596b660..c6601f9de519 100644
--- a/vllm/config/model.py
+++ b/vllm/config/model.py
@@ -440,13 +440,6 @@ def __post_init__(
         self.model = maybe_model_redirect(self.model)
         # The tokenizer is consistent with the model by default.
         if self.tokenizer is None:
-            # Check if this is a GGUF model (either local file or remote GGUF)
-            if is_gguf(self.model):
-                raise ValueError(
-                    "Using a tokenizer is mandatory when loading a GGUF model. "
-                    "Please specify the tokenizer path or name using the "
-                    "--tokenizer argument."
-                )
             self.tokenizer = self.model
         if self.tokenizer_revision is None:
             self.tokenizer_revision = self.revision
@@ -700,6 +693,14 @@ def _task_to_convert(task: TaskOption) -> ConvertType:
 
             self.multimodal_config = MultiModalConfig(**mm_config_kwargs)
 
+        # Multimodal GGUF models must use original repo for mm processing
+        if is_gguf(self.tokenizer) and self.is_multimodal_model:
+            raise ValueError(
+                "Loading a multimodal GGUF model needs to use original "
+                "tokenizer. Please specify the unquantized hf model's "
+                "repo name or path using the --tokenizer argument."
+            )
+
         if self.disable_sliding_window:
             # Set after get_and_verify_max_len to ensure that max_model_len
             # can be correctly capped to sliding window size
diff --git a/vllm/transformers_utils/gguf_utils.py b/vllm/transformers_utils/gguf_utils.py
index 2bf59c91a3bb..f727b1b4726b 100644
--- a/vllm/transformers_utils/gguf_utils.py
+++ b/vllm/transformers_utils/gguf_utils.py
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@
 from transformers import Gemma3Config, PretrainedConfig, SiglipVisionConfig
 
 from vllm.logger import init_logger
+from vllm.transformers_utils.config import list_filtered_repo_files
 
 logger = init_logger(__name__)
 
@@ -164,3 +165,44 @@ def maybe_patch_hf_config_from_gguf(
             hf_config = new_hf_config
 
     return hf_config
+
+
+def get_gguf_file_path_from_hf(
+    repo_id: str | Path,
+    quant_type: str,
+    revision: str | None = None,
+) -> str:
+    """Get the GGUF file path from HuggingFace Hub based on repo_id and quant_type.
+
+    Args:
+        repo_id: The HuggingFace repository ID (e.g., "Qwen/Qwen3-0.6B")
+        quant_type: The quantization type (e.g., "Q4_K_M", "F16")
+        revision: Optional revision/branch name
+
+    Returns:
+        The path to the GGUF file on HuggingFace Hub (e.g., "filename.gguf"),
+    """
+    repo_id = str(repo_id)
+    gguf_patterns = [
+        f"*-{quant_type}.gguf",
+        f"*-{quant_type}-*.gguf",
+        f"*/*-{quant_type}.gguf",
+        f"*/*-{quant_type}-*.gguf",
+    ]
+    matching_files = list_filtered_repo_files(
+        repo_id,
+        allow_patterns=gguf_patterns,
+        revision=revision,
+    )
+
+    if len(matching_files) == 0:
+        raise ValueError(
+            "Could not find GGUF file for repo %s with quantization %s.",
+            repo_id,
+            quant_type,
+        )
+
+    # Sort to ensure consistent ordering (prefer non-sharded files)
+    matching_files.sort(key=lambda x: (x.count("-"), x))
+    gguf_filename = matching_files[0]
+    return gguf_filename
diff --git a/vllm/transformers_utils/tokenizer.py b/vllm/transformers_utils/tokenizer.py
index f0e0ba8ef424..929dc8bf481c 100644
--- a/vllm/transformers_utils/tokenizer.py
+++ b/vllm/transformers_utils/tokenizer.py
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
     get_sentence_transformer_tokenizer_config,
     list_filtered_repo_files,
 )
+from vllm.transformers_utils.gguf_utils import get_gguf_file_path_from_hf
 from vllm.transformers_utils.tokenizers import MistralTokenizer
 from vllm.transformers_utils.utils import (
     check_gguf_file,
@@ -190,7 +191,14 @@ def get_tokenizer(
             kwargs["gguf_file"] = Path(tokenizer_name).name
             tokenizer_name = Path(tokenizer_name).parent
         elif is_remote_gguf(tokenizer_name):
-            tokenizer_name, _ = split_remote_gguf(tokenizer_name)
+            tokenizer_name, quant_type = split_remote_gguf(tokenizer_name)
+            # Get the HuggingFace Hub path for the GGUF file
+            gguf_file = get_gguf_file_path_from_hf(
+                tokenizer_name,
+                quant_type,
+                revision=revision,
+            )
+            kwargs["gguf_file"] = gguf_file
 
     # if `tokenizer_mode` == "auto", check if tokenizer can be loaded via Mistral format
     # first to use official Mistral tokenizer if possible.