diff --git a/pandas/io/excel/_base.py b/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
index 04015a08bce2f..537ac04882bdc 100644
--- a/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
+++ b/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
@@ -780,7 +780,7 @@ def close(self):
 class ExcelFile:
     """
     Class for parsing tabular excel sheets into DataFrame objects.
-    Uses xlrd. See read_excel for more documentation
+    Uses openpyxl. See read_excel for more documentation
 
     Parameters
     ----------
@@ -801,7 +801,7 @@ class ExcelFile:
 
     def __init__(self, io, engine=None):
         if engine is None:
-            engine = "xlrd"
+            engine = "openpyxl"
         if engine not in self._engines:
             raise ValueError(f"Unknown engine: {engine}")