diff --git a/src/transformers/tokenization_utils_base.py b/src/transformers/tokenization_utils_base.py
index b52a93ae94841b..16c05a14028eee 100644
--- a/src/transformers/tokenization_utils_base.py
+++ b/src/transformers/tokenization_utils_base.py
@@ -1874,7 +1874,10 @@ def apply_chat_template(
                     **template_kwargs,
                 )
             if continue_final_message:
-                final_message = chat[-1]["content"].strip()
+                final_message = chat[-1]["content"]
+                if isinstance(final_message, (list, tuple)):
+                    final_message = final_message[-1]["text"]
+                final_message = final_message.strip()
                 rendered_chat = rendered_chat[: rendered_chat.rindex(final_message) + len(final_message)].rstrip()
             rendered.append(rendered_chat)
 
diff --git a/tests/models/llava/test_processor_llava.py b/tests/models/llava/test_processor_llava.py
index 06a18061579670..d3a66a16df9a64 100644
--- a/tests/models/llava/test_processor_llava.py
+++ b/tests/models/llava/test_processor_llava.py
@@ -93,3 +93,24 @@ def test_chat_template(self):
 
         formatted_prompt = processor.apply_chat_template(messages, add_generation_prompt=True)
         self.assertEqual(expected_prompt, formatted_prompt)
+
+    def test_chat_template_with_continue_final_message(self):
+        processor = LlavaProcessor.from_pretrained("llava-hf/llava-1.5-7b-hf")
+        expected_prompt = "USER: <image>\nDescribe this image. ASSISTANT: There is a dog and"
+        messages = [
+            {
+                "role": "user",
+                "content": [
+                    {"type": "image"},
+                    {"type": "text", "text": "Describe this image."},
+                ],
+            },
+            {
+                "role": "assistant",
+                "content": [
+                    {"type": "text", "text": "There is a dog and"},
+                ],
+            },
+        ]
+        prompt = processor.apply_chat_template(messages, continue_final_message=True)
+        self.assertEqual(expected_prompt, prompt)