diff --git a/Lib/locale.py b/Lib/locale.py
index 4127d917465936..e94f0d1acbaa7d 100644
--- a/Lib/locale.py
+++ b/Lib/locale.py
@@ -962,7 +962,7 @@ def getpreferredencoding(do_setlocale=True):
     'c.ascii':                              'C',
     'c.en':                                 'C',
     'c.iso88591':                           'en_US.ISO8859-1',
-    'c.utf8':                               'en_US.UTF-8',
+    'c.utf8':                               'C.UTF-8',
     'c_c':                                  'C',
     'c_c.c':                                'C',
     'ca':                                   'ca_ES.ISO8859-1',
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Library/2023-04-25-22-06-00.gh-issue-74940.TOacQ9.rst b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Library/2023-04-25-22-06-00.gh-issue-74940.TOacQ9.rst
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000000..c37d795f3eb33d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Library/2023-04-25-22-06-00.gh-issue-74940.TOacQ9.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+The C.UTF-8 locale is no longer converted to en_US.UTF-8, enabling the use
+of UTF-8 encoding on systems which have no locales installed.