diff --git a/meson.build b/meson.build
index 2daaf3f400..9adb2160a4 100644
--- a/meson.build
+++ b/meson.build
@@ -937,6 +937,9 @@ conf.set_quoted('NTP_SERVERS', ntp_servers)
 default_locale = get_option('default-locale')
 conf.set_quoted('SYSTEMD_DEFAULT_LOCALE', default_locale)
 
+nspawn_locale = get_option('nspawn-locale')
+conf.set_quoted('SYSTEMD_NSPAWN_LOCALE', nspawn_locale)
+
 localegen_path = get_option('localegen-path')
 if localegen_path != ''
         conf.set_quoted('LOCALEGEN_PATH', localegen_path)
diff --git a/meson_options.txt b/meson_options.txt
index 6c816abd65..3bb25c6f76 100644
--- a/meson_options.txt
+++ b/meson_options.txt
@@ -302,6 +302,8 @@ option('gshadow', type : 'boolean',
        description : 'support for shadow group')
 option('default-locale', type : 'string', value : 'C.UTF-8',
        description : 'default locale used when /etc/locale.conf does not exist')
+option('nspawn-locale', type : 'string', value : 'C.UTF-8',
+       description : 'default locale used by systemd-nspawn when executing commands in a container')
 option('localegen-path', type : 'string', value : '',
        description : 'absolute path to the locale-gen binary in case the system is using locale-gen')
 option('service-watchdog', type : 'string', value : '3min',
diff --git a/src/nspawn/nspawn.c b/src/nspawn/nspawn.c
index 8e3c6522e4..a5cf4c2c19 100644
--- a/src/nspawn/nspawn.c
+++ b/src/nspawn/nspawn.c
@@ -3488,10 +3488,7 @@ static int inner_child(
         }
 
         if (arg_start_mode != START_BOOT) {
-                /* If we're running a command in the container, let's default to the C.UTF-8 locale as it's
-                 * part of glibc these days and was backported to most distros a long time before it got
-                 * added to upstream glibc. */
-                envp[n_env] = strdup("LANG=C.UTF-8");
+                envp[n_env] = strdup("LANG=" SYSTEMD_NSPAWN_LOCALE);
                 if (!envp[n_env])
                         return log_oom();
                 n_env++;