diff --git a/debian/additions/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf b/debian/additions/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf
index a008e71e0a7..0214a9dab04 100644
--- a/debian/additions/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf
+++ b/debian/additions/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf
@@ -84,10 +84,10 @@ expire_logs_days        = 10
 # * Character sets
 #
 
-# MySQL/MariaDB default is Latin1, but in Debian we rather default to the full
+# MariaDB default is Latin1, but in Debian we rather default to the full
 # utf8 4-byte character set. See also client.cnf
-character-set-server  = utf8mb4
-collation-server      = utf8mb4_general_ci
+character-set-server     = utf8mb4
+character-set-collations = utf8mb4=uca1400_ai_ci
 
 #
 # * InnoDB