.. blogpost:: :title: Issue with PyQt :keywords: PyQt :date: 2017-08-09 :categories: module I recently faced the issue: :: This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "windows" in "". The failing instruction: :: import matplotlib.plt Quite annoying. I finally found this page `Qt 5.1.1: Application failed to start because platform plugin "windows" is missing `_ which tells to set up ``QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH`` ot find DLL ``qwindows.dll``: :: set QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH=%PYTHON%\Library\plugins\platforms Quite annoying. I was using Anaconda 3.5.