diff --git a/storage/s3/src/main/java/io/aiven/kafka/tieredstorage/storage/s3/S3StorageConfig.java b/storage/s3/src/main/java/io/aiven/kafka/tieredstorage/storage/s3/S3StorageConfig.java
index 5a733bd6e..d3a6dee2a 100644
--- a/storage/s3/src/main/java/io/aiven/kafka/tieredstorage/storage/s3/S3StorageConfig.java
+++ b/storage/s3/src/main/java/io/aiven/kafka/tieredstorage/storage/s3/S3StorageConfig.java
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ public class S3StorageConfig extends AbstractConfig {
         + "Valid values: between 5MiB and 2GiB";
     static final int S3_MULTIPART_UPLOAD_PART_SIZE_MIN = 5 * 1024 * 1024; // 5MiB
     static final int S3_MULTIPART_UPLOAD_PART_SIZE_MAX = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
-    static final int S3_MULTIPART_UPLOAD_PART_SIZE_DEFAULT = S3_MULTIPART_UPLOAD_PART_SIZE_MIN;
+    static final int S3_MULTIPART_UPLOAD_PART_SIZE_DEFAULT = 16 * 1024 * 1024; // 16MiB
 
     private static final String S3_API_CALL_TIMEOUT_CONFIG = "s3.api.call.timeout";
     private static final String S3_API_CALL_TIMEOUT_DOC = "AWS S3 API call timeout in milliseconds";