diff --git a/src/Plugin/migrate_plus/data_parser/Json.php b/src/Plugin/migrate_plus/data_parser/Json.php
index d8292ae466d1f3d0b0a29158dbdf1be4bb4e7d84..ab1a91f7fe63e64a3d62636a9e38562454221dcc 100755
--- a/src/Plugin/migrate_plus/data_parser/Json.php
+++ b/src/Plugin/migrate_plus/data_parser/Json.php
@@ -42,8 +42,12 @@ class Json extends DataParserPluginBase implements ContainerFactoryPluginInterfa
    */
   protected function getSourceData($url) {
     $response = $this->getDataFetcherPlugin()->getResponseContent($url);
+
+    // json_decode() expects utf8 data so let's make sure it gets it.
+    $utf8response = utf8_encode($response);
+
     // Convert objects to associative arrays.
-    $source_data = json_decode($response, TRUE);
+    $source_data = json_decode($utf8response, TRUE);
     // Backwards-compatibility for depth selection.
     if (is_int($this->itemSelector)) {
       return $this->selectByDepth($source_data);