diff --git a/8/mysql-tomcat/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml b/8/mysql-tomcat/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml
index cf668978a828f631e7214c94528c15e6d044a951..1c69b3900ffd9c8c68dffc2550ac3d24d07608b5 100644
--- a/8/mysql-tomcat/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml
+++ b/8/mysql-tomcat/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml
@@ -88,6 +88,8 @@
     <property name="connection.password">replacepassword</property>
     <property name="connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</property>
     <property name="dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5InnoDBDialect</property>
+    <property name="connection.useUnicode">true</property>
+    <property name="connection.characterEncoding">UTF-8</property>
     <property name="dbcp.poolPreparedStatements">true</property>
     <property name="dbcp.maxOpenPreparedStatements">20</property>
     <mapping resource="xwiki.hbm.xml"/>
diff --git a/9/mysql-tomcat/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml b/9/mysql-tomcat/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml
index cf668978a828f631e7214c94528c15e6d044a951..1c69b3900ffd9c8c68dffc2550ac3d24d07608b5 100644
--- a/9/mysql-tomcat/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml
+++ b/9/mysql-tomcat/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml
@@ -88,6 +88,8 @@
     <property name="connection.password">replacepassword</property>
     <property name="connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</property>
     <property name="dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5InnoDBDialect</property>
+    <property name="connection.useUnicode">true</property>
+    <property name="connection.characterEncoding">UTF-8</property>
     <property name="dbcp.poolPreparedStatements">true</property>
     <property name="dbcp.maxOpenPreparedStatements">20</property>
     <mapping resource="xwiki.hbm.xml"/>
diff --git a/template/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml b/template/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml
index c17bfad87939fc6a58d5fcda973e63a2346052c8..56b0d361974c705005fde857cd86cc6354ee971d 100644
--- a/template/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml
+++ b/template/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml
@@ -88,6 +88,8 @@
     <property name="connection.password">replacepassword</property>
     <property name="connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</property>
     <property name="dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5InnoDBDialect</property>
+    <property name="connection.useUnicode">true</property>
+    <property name="connection.characterEncoding">UTF-8</property>
     <property name="dbcp.poolPreparedStatements">true</property>
     <property name="dbcp.maxOpenPreparedStatements">20</property>
     <mapping resource="xwiki.hbm.xml"/>