diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
index d10ff1fb4..4d8d8a244 100644
--- a/AUTHORS
+++ b/AUTHORS
@@ -122,3 +122,4 @@ Wouter Klein Heerenbrink
 Yaroslav Halchenko
 Yuri Savin
 Miriam Forner
+Tuhin Mitra
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 38b1d8b78..a9cef2ab8 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -17,6 +17,10 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 -->
 
 
+## [unreleased]
+### Fixed
+* #1496 Fix error when Bearer token string is empty but preceded by `Bearer` keyword.
+
 ## [3.0.1] - 2024-09-07
 ### Fixed
 * #1491 Fix migration error when there are pre-existing Access Tokens.
diff --git a/oauth2_provider/middleware.py b/oauth2_provider/middleware.py
index 65c9cf03c..5a8a86d87 100644
--- a/oauth2_provider/middleware.py
+++ b/oauth2_provider/middleware.py
@@ -52,8 +52,9 @@ def __init__(self, get_response):
 
     def __call__(self, request):
         authheader = request.META.get("HTTP_AUTHORIZATION", "")
-        if authheader.startswith("Bearer"):
-            tokenstring = authheader.split()[1]
+        splits = authheader.split(maxsplit=1)
+        if authheader.startswith("Bearer") and len(splits) == 2:
+            tokenstring = splits[1]
             AccessToken = get_access_token_model()
             try:
                 token_checksum = hashlib.sha256(tokenstring.encode("utf-8")).hexdigest()