diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 36ab4c085..17b98c2b7 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -148,6 +148,7 @@ More ARM cross-compilation targets are supported: "arm.*eb",
     (<http://bugs.gnu.org/19883>)
 
 ** Ports
+*** Setting GUILE_INSTALL_LOCALE=1 sets port default charset from locale
 *** Fix port position handling on binary input ports
     (<http://bugs.gnu.org/20302>)
 *** Bytevector and custom binary ports to use ISO-8859-1
diff --git a/libguile/ports.c b/libguile/ports.c
index d7459b3ef..5a756b78e 100644
--- a/libguile/ports.c
+++ b/libguile/ports.c
@@ -2911,6 +2911,9 @@ scm_init_ports ()
                     scm_make_fluid_with_default (SCM_BOOL_F));
   scm_port_encoding_init = 1;
 
+  /* Use the locale as the default port encoding.  */
+  scm_i_set_default_port_encoding (locale_charset ());
+
   SCM_VARIABLE_SET (default_conversion_strategy_var,
                     scm_make_fluid_with_default (sym_substitute));
   scm_conversion_strategy_init = 1;