diff --git a/runtimes/aleph-debian-11-python/create_disk_image.sh b/runtimes/aleph-debian-11-python/create_disk_image.sh
index 2387398d5..705b1fe84 100755
--- a/runtimes/aleph-debian-11-python/create_disk_image.sh
+++ b/runtimes/aleph-debian-11-python/create_disk_image.sh
@@ -26,7 +26,12 @@ apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends --no-install-suggests \
   docker.io \
   cgroupfs-mount \
   nftables \
-  iputils-ping curl
+  iputils-ping curl \
+  locales
+
+# Update locale settings to en_US UTF-8
+echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" > /etc/locale.gen
+locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
 
 pip3 install 'fastapi~=0.103.1'
 
diff --git a/runtimes/aleph-debian-12-python/create_disk_image.sh b/runtimes/aleph-debian-12-python/create_disk_image.sh
index 868cc05f2..18f2605a3 100755
--- a/runtimes/aleph-debian-12-python/create_disk_image.sh
+++ b/runtimes/aleph-debian-12-python/create_disk_image.sh
@@ -27,7 +27,12 @@ apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends --no-install-suggests \
   docker.io \
   cgroupfs-mount \
   nftables \
-  iputils-ping curl
+  iputils-ping curl \
+  locales
+
+# Update locale settings to en_US UTF-8
+echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" > /etc/locale.gen
+locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
 
 echo "Pip installing aleph-sdk-python"
 mkdir -p /opt/aleph/libs