diff --git a/Lib/test/test_re.py b/Lib/test/test_re.py
index 0b710e3766ab82..e805169007ccf5 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_re.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_re.py
@@ -1516,8 +1516,7 @@ def test_ascii_and_unicode_flag(self):
         self.assertRaises(re.error, re.compile, r'(?au)\w')
 
     def test_locale_flag(self):
-        import locale
-        _, enc = locale.getlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE)
+        enc = locale.getpreferredencoding()
         # Search non-ASCII letter
         for i in range(128, 256):
             try:
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Tests/2019-02-28-18-33-29.bpo-29571.r6b9fr.rst b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Tests/2019-02-28-18-33-29.bpo-29571.r6b9fr.rst
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000000..0f40c98514ce9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Tests/2019-02-28-18-33-29.bpo-29571.r6b9fr.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+Fix ``test_re.test_locale_flag()``:  use ``locale.getpreferredencoding()``
+rather than ``locale.getlocale()`` to get the locale encoding. With some
+locales, ``locale.getlocale()`` returns the wrong encoding.