diff --git a/lucene/src/test/org/apache/lucene/util/LuceneTestCaseJ4.java b/lucene/src/test/org/apache/lucene/util/LuceneTestCaseJ4.java
index 113e5a0dcbd..4bd58f7cf14 100644
--- a/lucene/src/test/org/apache/lucene/util/LuceneTestCaseJ4.java
+++ b/lucene/src/test/org/apache/lucene/util/LuceneTestCaseJ4.java
@@ -140,6 +140,7 @@ public abstract class LuceneTestCaseJ4 {
     if (s == null)
       throw new RuntimeException("To run tests, you need to define system property 'tempDir' or 'java.io.tmpdir'.");
     TEMP_DIR = new File(s);
+    TEMP_DIR.mkdirs();
   }
 
   // by default we randomly pick a different codec for