diff --git a/solr/CHANGES.txt b/solr/CHANGES.txt
index ef834bd7db6..04a8f1f442f 100644
--- a/solr/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/solr/CHANGES.txt
@@ -153,6 +153,9 @@ Bug Fixes
 * SOLR-7956: There are interrupts on shutdown in places that can cause ChannelAlreadyClosed
   exceptions which prevents proper closing of transaction logs. (Mark Miller)
 
+* SOLR-7972: Fix VelocityResponseWriter template encoding issue.
+  Templates must be UTF-8 encoded. (Erik Hatcher)
+
 Optimizations
 ----------------------
 
diff --git a/solr/contrib/velocity/src/java/org/apache/solr/response/VelocityResponseWriter.java b/solr/contrib/velocity/src/java/org/apache/solr/response/VelocityResponseWriter.java
index 05456e4bcf6..f1a54394166 100644
--- a/solr/contrib/velocity/src/java/org/apache/solr/response/VelocityResponseWriter.java
+++ b/solr/contrib/velocity/src/java/org/apache/solr/response/VelocityResponseWriter.java
@@ -284,6 +284,8 @@ public class VelocityResponseWriter implements QueryResponseWriter, SolrCoreAwar
 
     engine.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.RESOURCE_LOADER, StringUtils.join(loaders,','));
 
+    engine.setProperty(RuntimeConstants.INPUT_ENCODING, "UTF-8");
+
     // bring in any custom properties too
     engine.init(velocityInitProps);
 
diff --git a/solr/contrib/velocity/src/test-files/velocity/solr/collection1/conf/velocity/encoding.vm b/solr/contrib/velocity/src/test-files/velocity/solr/collection1/conf/velocity/encoding.vm
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..419f3f2da94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/solr/contrib/velocity/src/test-files/velocity/solr/collection1/conf/velocity/encoding.vm
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+éñçø∂îñg
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/solr/contrib/velocity/src/test/org/apache/solr/velocity/VelocityResponseWriterTest.java b/solr/contrib/velocity/src/test/org/apache/solr/velocity/VelocityResponseWriterTest.java
index 0d2c3d1143c..c601dbc3836 100644
--- a/solr/contrib/velocity/src/test/org/apache/solr/velocity/VelocityResponseWriterTest.java
+++ b/solr/contrib/velocity/src/test/org/apache/solr/velocity/VelocityResponseWriterTest.java
@@ -92,6 +92,11 @@ public class VelocityResponseWriterTest extends SolrTestCaseJ4 {
     assertEquals("0", h.query(req("q","*:*", "wt","velocity",VelocityResponseWriter.TEMPLATE,"numFound")));
   }
 
+  @Test
+  public void testEncoding() throws Exception {
+    assertEquals("éñçø∂îñg", h.query(req("q","*:*", "wt","velocity",VelocityResponseWriter.TEMPLATE,"encoding")));
+  }
+
   @Test
   public void testMacros() throws Exception {
     // tests that a macro in a custom macros.vm is visible