diff --git a/docs/devel/testing/functional.rst b/docs/devel/testing/functional.rst
index ecc738922b..bcb5509512 100644
--- a/docs/devel/testing/functional.rst
+++ b/docs/devel/testing/functional.rst
@@ -173,7 +173,7 @@ QEMU binary selection
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
 The QEMU binary used for the ``self.vm`` QEMUMachine instance will
-primarily depend on the value of the ``qemu_bin`` class attribute.
+primarily depend on the value of the ``qemu_bin`` instance attribute.
 If it is not explicitly set by the test code, its default value will
 be the result the QEMU_TEST_QEMU_BINARY environment variable.
 
diff --git a/tests/functional/qemu_test/testcase.py b/tests/functional/qemu_test/testcase.py
index 9d5611c4d7..058bf270ec 100644
--- a/tests/functional/qemu_test/testcase.py
+++ b/tests/functional/qemu_test/testcase.py
@@ -33,7 +33,6 @@ from .uncompress import uncompress
 
 class QemuBaseTest(unittest.TestCase):
 
-    qemu_bin = os.getenv('QEMU_TEST_QEMU_BINARY')
     arch = None
 
     workdir = None
@@ -193,6 +192,7 @@ class QemuBaseTest(unittest.TestCase):
         return True
 
     def setUp(self):
+        self.qemu_bin = os.getenv('QEMU_TEST_QEMU_BINARY')
         self.assertIsNotNone(self.qemu_bin, 'QEMU_TEST_QEMU_BINARY must be set')
         self.arch = self.qemu_bin.split('-')[-1]
         self.socketdir = None