diff --git a/doc/source/user/using.rst b/doc/source/user/using.rst
index d0ff3bd5..f8da6def 100644
--- a/doc/source/user/using.rst
+++ b/doc/source/user/using.rst
@@ -119,6 +119,11 @@ such as the ``extract_mesages`` section provided by Babel__.
            # A comment on a dedicated line
            value3
 
+.. note::
+
+   On Python 3 ``setup.cfg`` is explicitly read as UTF-8.  On Python 2 the
+   encoding is dependent on the terminal encoding.
+
 __ http://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/setuptools.html#configuring-setup-using-setup-cfg-files
 __ http://babel.pocoo.org/en/latest/setup.html
 
diff --git a/pbr/util.py b/pbr/util.py
index 163feb83..31a2a262 100644
--- a/pbr/util.py
+++ b/pbr/util.py
@@ -214,7 +214,11 @@ def cfg_to_args(path='setup.cfg', script_args=()):
     if not os.path.exists(path):
         raise errors.DistutilsFileError("file '%s' does not exist" %
                                         os.path.abspath(path))
-    parser.read(path)
+    try:
+        parser.read(path, encoding='utf-8')
+    except TypeError:
+        # Python 2 doesn't accept the encoding kwarg
+        parser.read(path)
     config = {}
     for section in parser.sections():
         config[section] = dict()