diff --git a/nemo_curator/stages/text/io/writer/jsonl.py b/nemo_curator/stages/text/io/writer/jsonl.py
index 7eff540a23..9b568d7673 100644
--- a/nemo_curator/stages/text/io/writer/jsonl.py
+++ b/nemo_curator/stages/text/io/writer/jsonl.py
@@ -40,6 +40,7 @@ def write_data(self, task: DocumentBatch, file_path: str) -> None:
         write_kwargs = {
             "lines": True,
             "orient": "records",
+            "force_ascii": False,
         }
 
         # Add any additional kwargs, allowing them to override defaults
diff --git a/tests/stages/text/io/writer/test_jsonl.py b/tests/stages/text/io/writer/test_jsonl.py
index c6286e9d66..66f51c8a2a 100644
--- a/tests/stages/text/io/writer/test_jsonl.py
+++ b/tests/stages/text/io/writer/test_jsonl.py
@@ -107,6 +107,37 @@ def test_jsonl_writer_with_columns_subset(self, pandas_document_batch: DocumentB
         expected = pandas_document_batch.to_pandas()[["text", "score"]]
         pd.testing.assert_frame_equal(df, expected)
 
+
+    def test_jsonl_writer_defaults_to_utf8_output(self, tmpdir: str):
+        """JsonlWriter should preserve non-ASCII characters by default."""
+        output_dir = os.path.join(tmpdir, "jsonl_utf8")
+        writer = JsonlWriter(path=output_dir)
+        batch = DocumentBatch(data=pd.DataFrame({"text": ["你好, 世界"], "id": [1]}), task_id="utf8", dataset_name="test")
+
+        writer.setup()
+        result = writer.process(batch)
+
+        file_path = result.data[0]
+        with open(file_path, encoding="utf-8") as f:
+            payload = f.read()
+        assert "你好, 世界" in payload
+        assert "\\u4f60" not in payload
+
+    def test_jsonl_writer_allows_force_ascii_override(self, tmpdir: str):
+        """JsonlWriter should still honor user-provided force_ascii=True."""
+        output_dir = os.path.join(tmpdir, "jsonl_ascii")
+        writer = JsonlWriter(path=output_dir, write_kwargs={"force_ascii": True})
+        batch = DocumentBatch(data=pd.DataFrame({"text": ["你好, 世界"], "id": [1]}), task_id="ascii", dataset_name="test")
+
+        writer.setup()
+        result = writer.process(batch)
+
+        file_path = result.data[0]
+        with open(file_path, encoding="utf-8") as f:
+            payload = f.read()
+        assert "你好, 世界" not in payload
+        assert "\\u4f60" in payload
+
     def test_jsonl_writer_with_custom_options(self, pandas_document_batch: DocumentBatch, tmpdir: str):
         """Test JsonlWriter with custom formatting options."""
         output_dir = os.path.join(tmpdir, "jsonl_custom")