diff --git a/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/templates/settings.tmpl b/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/templates/settings.tmpl
index 2b369cadf..f6de9c68b 100644
--- a/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/templates/settings.tmpl
+++ b/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/templates/settings.tmpl
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ import __project_name__
 BOT_NAME = 'scrapy-bot'
 BOT_VERSION = '1.0'
 
-DEFAULT_DATA_ENCODING = 'ISO-8859-1'
+DEFAULT_DATA_ENCODING = 'utf-8'
 
 COMMANDS_MODULE = '__project_name__.commands'
 COMMANDS_SETTINGS_MODULE = '__project_name__.conf.commands'
@@ -86,4 +86,4 @@ URLLENGTH_LIMIT = 2083
 # scrapy webservice
 WS_ENABLED = 0
 
-SPIDERPROFILER_ENABLED = 0
\ No newline at end of file
+SPIDERPROFILER_ENABLED = 0