diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 6b90203..b666648 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
 #  Website: https://github.com/jr-k/obscreen
 #  License: GPLv2 (see LICENSE file)
 
+import os
 import sys
 import logging
 
@@ -28,6 +29,9 @@ if sys.platform == "win32":
 if sys.platform == "darwin":
     common_dependencies.remove('pysqlite3')
 
+os.environ['PYTHONUTF8'] = '1'
+os.environ['PYTHONIOENCODING'] = 'utf-8'
+
 setup(
     name='obscreen',
     version=open('version.txt').read(),