1. Set the following in web.xml <request-character-encoding> UTF-8 </request-character-encoding> <response-character-encoding> UTF-8 </response-character-encoding> 2. Create a servlet like the following @WebServlet( "/test" ) public class TestServlet extends HttpServlet { @Override protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res) throws IOException { res.setContentType( "text/plain" ); PrintWriter pw = res.getWriter(); pw.println( "REQ_CHAR_ENC = " + req.getCharacterEncoding()); pw.println( "RES_CHAR_ENC = " + res.getCharacterEncoding()); } } 3. Running the servlet produces the following output. REQ_CHAR_ENC = null RES_CHAR_ENC = ISO-8859-1