diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 7fe01dad26..3d217502b5 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -61,6 +61,7 @@ Ansible Changes By Release
   Use ignore_errors or failed_when in playbooks if you wish to ignore errors.
 * Experimentally added pmrun become method.
 * Enable the docker connection plugin to use su as a become method
+* Add an encoding parameter for the replace module so that it can operate on non-utf-8 files
 
 #### New Inventory scripts:
 - lxd
diff --git a/lib/ansible/modules/files/replace.py b/lib/ansible/modules/files/replace.py
index 141b753b84..cf03f5452d 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/modules/files/replace.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/modules/files/replace.py
@@ -96,6 +96,12 @@ options:
     version_added: "1.9"
     description:
       - 'This flag indicates that filesystem links, if they exist, should be followed.'
+  encoding:
+    required: false
+    default: "utf-8"
+    version_added: "2.4"
+    description:
+      - "The character encoding for reading and writing the file."
 notes:
   - As of Ansible 2.3, the I(dest) option has been changed to I(path) as default, but I(dest) still works as well.
 """