diff --git a/RELEASENOTES.md b/RELEASENOTES.md
index ce0948036b..f26f8fae06 100644
--- a/RELEASENOTES.md
+++ b/RELEASENOTES.md
@@ -17,6 +17,8 @@
     *   Use the compressed audio format bitrate to calculate the min buffer size
         for `AudioTrack` in direct playbacks (passthrough).
 *   Text:
+    *   Fix `TextRenderer` passing an invalid (negative) index to
+        `Subtitle.getEventTime` if a subtitle file contains no cues.
     *   SubRip: Add support for UTF-16 files if they start with a byte order
         mark.
 *   Session:
diff --git a/libraries/exoplayer/src/main/java/androidx/media3/exoplayer/text/TextRenderer.java b/libraries/exoplayer/src/main/java/androidx/media3/exoplayer/text/TextRenderer.java
index 2ddbd5908b..8cd8bb0c37 100644
--- a/libraries/exoplayer/src/main/java/androidx/media3/exoplayer/text/TextRenderer.java
+++ b/libraries/exoplayer/src/main/java/androidx/media3/exoplayer/text/TextRenderer.java
@@ -427,7 +427,7 @@ public final class TextRenderer extends BaseRenderer implements Callback {
   @SideEffectFree
   private long getCurrentEventTimeUs(long positionUs) {
     int nextEventTimeIndex = subtitle.getNextEventTimeIndex(positionUs);
-    if (nextEventTimeIndex == 0) {
+    if (nextEventTimeIndex == 0 || subtitle.getEventTimeCount() == 0) {
       return subtitle.timeUs;
     }