diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/template-filename-encoding.yaml b/changelogs/fragments/template-filename-encoding.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..162c5d6e9dd
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+++ b/changelogs/fragments/template-filename-encoding.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+---
+bugfixes:
+- template action plugin - fix the encoding of filenames to avoid tracebacks on
+  Python2 when characters that are not present in the user's locale are
+  present. (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/39424)