diff --git a/scrapy/templates/project/module/items.py.tmpl b/scrapy/templates/project/module/items.py.tmpl
index aab8ca9b3..1cd39bec0 100644
--- a/scrapy/templates/project/module/items.py.tmpl
+++ b/scrapy/templates/project/module/items.py.tmpl
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+#coding: utf-8
+
 # Define here the models for your scraped items
 #
 # See documentation in: