diff --git a/compat/mingw.c b/compat/mingw.c
index 4619ff15c7..fc1056b3bb 100644
--- a/compat/mingw.c
+++ b/compat/mingw.c
@@ -2889,6 +2889,15 @@ static void setup_windows_environment(void)
 
 	if (!getenv("LC_ALL") && !getenv("LC_CTYPE") && !getenv("LANG"))
 		setenv("LC_CTYPE", "C.UTF-8", 1);
+
+	/*
+	 * Change 'core.symlinks' default to false, unless native symlinks are
+	 * enabled in MSys2 (via 'MSYS=winsymlinks:nativestrict'). Thus we can
+	 * run the test suite (which doesn't obey config files) with or without
+	 * symlink support.
+	 */
+	if (!(tmp = getenv("MSYS")) || !strstr(tmp, "winsymlinks:nativestrict"))
+		has_symlinks = 0;
 }
 
 int is_valid_win32_path(const char *path, int allow_literal_nul)