diff --git a/solr/CHANGES.txt b/solr/CHANGES.txt
index f25e600fd1f..100967cc01b 100644
--- a/solr/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/solr/CHANGES.txt
@@ -351,6 +351,9 @@ Bug Fixes
 * SOLR-8255: MiniSolrCloudCluster needs to use a thread-safe list to keep track
   of its child nodes (Alan Woodward)
 
+* SOLR-8254: HttpSolrCore.getCoreByCollection() can throw NPE (Alan Woodward,
+  Mark Miller)
+
 Optimizations
 ----------------------
 
diff --git a/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/servlet/HttpSolrCall.java b/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/servlet/HttpSolrCall.java
index e5329e093dc..e094bffc848 100644
--- a/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/servlet/HttpSolrCall.java
+++ b/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/servlet/HttpSolrCall.java
@@ -783,10 +783,8 @@ public class HttpSolrCall {
     for (Map.Entry<String, Slice> entry : entries) {
       // first see if we have the leader
       Replica leaderProps = clusterState.getLeader(collection, entry.getKey());
-      if (liveNodes.contains(leaderProps.getNodeName()) && leaderProps.getState() == Replica.State.ACTIVE) {
-        if (leaderProps != null) {
-          core = checkProps(leaderProps);
-        }
+      if (leaderProps != null && liveNodes.contains(leaderProps.getNodeName()) && leaderProps.getState() == Replica.State.ACTIVE) {
+        core = checkProps(leaderProps);
         if (core != null) {
           return core;
         }