diff --git a/common.mk b/common.mk
index 78033946..b8ceea3b 100644
--- a/common.mk
+++ b/common.mk
@@ -53,6 +53,10 @@ CPPFLAGS += -DI3_VERSION=\"${GIT_VERSION}\"
 CPPFLAGS += -DSYSCONFDIR=\"${SYSCONFDIR}\"
 CPPFLAGS += -DTERM_EMU=\"$(TERM_EMU)\"
 
+ifeq ($(shell pkg-config --atleast-version=8.10 libpcre && echo 1),1)
+CPPFLAGS += -DPCRE_HAS_UCP=1
+endif
+
 LIBS += -lm
 LIBS += $(call ldflags_for_lib, xcb-event, xcb-event)
 LIBS += $(call ldflags_for_lib, xcb-keysyms, xcb-keysyms)
diff --git a/src/regex.c b/src/regex.c
index f419e4bb..64a2f3a4 100644
--- a/src/regex.c
+++ b/src/regex.c
@@ -25,9 +25,12 @@ struct regex *regex_new(const char *pattern) {
 
     struct regex *re = scalloc(sizeof(struct regex));
     re->pattern = sstrdup(pattern);
+    int options = PCRE_UTF8;
+#ifdef PCRE_HAS_UCP
     /* We use PCRE_UCP so that \B, \b, \D, \d, \S, \s, \W, \w and some POSIX
      * character classes play nicely with Unicode */
-    int options = PCRE_UCP | PCRE_UTF8;
+    options |= PCRE_UCP;
+#endif
     while (!(re->regex = pcre_compile2(pattern, options, &errorcode, &error, &offset, NULL))) {
         /* If the error is that PCRE was not compiled with UTF-8 support we
          * disable it and try again */