diff --git a/spacy/displacy/__init__.py b/spacy/displacy/__init__.py
index 5d49b6eb7..8bf84981b 100644
--- a/spacy/displacy/__init__.py
+++ b/spacy/displacy/__init__.py
@@ -227,12 +227,13 @@ def parse_spans(doc: Doc, options: Dict[str, Any] = {}) -> Dict[str, Any]:
             "kb_id": span.kb_id_ if span.kb_id_ else "",
             "kb_url": kb_url_template.format(span.kb_id_) if kb_url_template else "#",
         }
-        for span in doc.spans[spans_key]
+        for span in doc.spans.get(spans_key, [])
     ]
     tokens = [token.text for token in doc]
 
     if not spans:
-        warnings.warn(Warnings.W117.format(spans_key=spans_key))
+        keys = list(doc.spans.keys())
+        warnings.warn(Warnings.W117.format(spans_key=spans_key, keys=keys))
     title = doc.user_data.get("title", None) if hasattr(doc, "user_data") else None
     settings = get_doc_settings(doc)
     return {
diff --git a/spacy/errors.py b/spacy/errors.py
index 60985fbd7..147af4eec 100644
--- a/spacy/errors.py
+++ b/spacy/errors.py
@@ -195,7 +195,7 @@ class Warnings(metaclass=ErrorsWithCodes):
     W117 = ("No spans to visualize found in Doc object with spans_key: '{spans_key}'. If this is "
             "surprising to you, make sure the Doc was processed using a model "
             "that supports span categorization, and check the `doc.spans[spans_key]` "
-            "property manually if necessary.")
+            "property manually if necessary.\n\nAvailable keys: {keys}")
     W118 = ("Term '{term}' not found in glossary. It may however be explained in documentation "
             "for the corpora used to train the language. Please check "
             "`nlp.meta[\"sources\"]` for any relevant links.")
diff --git a/spacy/tests/test_displacy.py b/spacy/tests/test_displacy.py
index ccc145b44..f298b38e0 100644
--- a/spacy/tests/test_displacy.py
+++ b/spacy/tests/test_displacy.py
@@ -203,6 +203,16 @@ def test_displacy_parse_spans_different_spans_key(en_vocab):
     ]
 
 
+def test_displacy_parse_empty_spans_key(en_vocab):
+    """Test that having an unset spans key doesn't raise an error"""
+    doc = Doc(en_vocab, words=["Welcome", "to", "the", "Bank", "of", "China"])
+    doc.spans["custom"] = [Span(doc, 3, 6, "BANK")]
+    with pytest.warns(UserWarning, match="W117"):
+        spans = displacy.parse_spans(doc)
+
+    assert isinstance(spans, dict)
+
+
 def test_displacy_parse_ents(en_vocab):
     """Test that named entities on a Doc are converted into displaCy's format."""
     doc = Doc(en_vocab, words=["But", "Google", "is", "starting", "from", "behind"])