 <p>When the <code>JUnitXmlTestsListener</code> saves an XML element with <code>XML.save</code> the default encoding that is used is <code>ISO-8859-1</code>. It should use <code>UTF-8</code> instead.</p> <p>You can try to remove the <code>JUnitXmlTestsListener</code> from your build and <a href="https://etorreborre.github.io/specs2/guide/SPECS2-3.6/org.specs2.guide.JUnitXmlOutput.html" rel="nofollow">use specs2</a> to generate <code>junit-xml</code> reports:</p> <pre><code>libraryDependencies += "org.specs2" %% "specs2-junit" % "3.6" sbt&gt; testOnly *MySpec -- console junitxml </code></pre>