diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/update-conditionals-bare-vars-default.yml b/changelogs/fragments/update-conditionals-bare-vars-default.yml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..241ec821270
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/fragments/update-conditionals-bare-vars-default.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+minor_changes:
+  - conditionals - change the default of CONDITIONAL_BARE_VARS to False (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/70682).
diff --git a/lib/ansible/config/base.yml b/lib/ansible/config/base.yml
index 52218008023..630c50aa7cf 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/config/base.yml
+++ b/lib/ansible/config/base.yml
@@ -366,14 +366,14 @@ COLOR_WARN:
   - {key: warn, section: colors}
 CONDITIONAL_BARE_VARS:
   name: Allow bare variable evaluation in conditionals
-  default: True
+  default: False
   type: boolean
   description:
     - With this setting on (True), running conditional evaluation 'var' is treated differently than 'var.subkey' as the first is evaluated
       directly while the second goes through the Jinja2 parser. But 'false' strings in 'var' get evaluated as booleans.
     - With this setting off they both evaluate the same but in cases in which 'var' was 'false' (a string) it won't get evaluated as a boolean anymore.
     - Currently this setting defaults to 'True' but will soon change to 'False' and the setting itself will be removed in the future.
-    - Expect the default to change in version 2.10 and that this setting eventually will be deprecated after 2.12
+    - Expect that this setting eventually will be deprecated after 2.12
   env: [{name: ANSIBLE_CONDITIONAL_BARE_VARS}]
   ini:
   - {key: conditional_bare_variables, section: defaults}