diff --git a/Doc/c-api/unicode.rst b/Doc/c-api/unicode.rst
index 3dd3b3a36c2ff5..cce15b700a845c 100644
--- a/Doc/c-api/unicode.rst
+++ b/Doc/c-api/unicode.rst
@@ -591,6 +591,15 @@ APIs:
    decref'ing the returned objects.
 
 
+.. c:function:: const char* PyUnicode_GetDefaultEncoding(void)
+
+   Return the name of the default string encoding, ``"utf-8"``.
+   See :func:`sys.getdefaultencoding`.
+
+   The returned string does not need to be freed, and is valid
+   until interpreter shutdown.
+
+
 .. c:function:: Py_ssize_t PyUnicode_GetLength(PyObject *unicode)
 
    Return the length of the Unicode object, in code points.
diff --git a/Doc/data/refcounts.dat b/Doc/data/refcounts.dat
index fb1215df777644..cb186b6db3398b 100644
--- a/Doc/data/refcounts.dat
+++ b/Doc/data/refcounts.dat
@@ -2755,6 +2755,9 @@ PyUnicode_FromFormatV:PyObject*::+1:
 PyUnicode_FromFormatV:const char*:format::
 PyUnicode_FromFormatV:va_list:args::
 
+PyUnicode_GetDefaultEncoding:const char*:::
+PyUnicode_GetDefaultEncoding::void::
+
 PyUnicode_GetLength:Py_ssize_t:::
 PyUnicode_GetLength:PyObject*:unicode:0:
 
diff --git a/Doc/library/sys.rst b/Doc/library/sys.rst
index 2ba70cbf7c6a44..add1d53153c39d 100644
--- a/Doc/library/sys.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/sys.rst
@@ -751,8 +751,8 @@ always available. Unless explicitly noted otherwise, all variables are read-only
 
 .. function:: getdefaultencoding()
 
-   Return the name of the current default string encoding used by the Unicode
-   implementation.
+   Return ``'utf-8'``. This is the name of the default string encoding, used
+   in methods like :meth:`str.encode`.
 
 
 .. function:: getdlopenflags()