diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 8c236195f7b..bba7918903b 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -3,6 +3,10 @@
 - Added `onBlur` prop to `EuiComboBox` ([#1400](https://github.com/elastic/eui/pull/1400))
 - Added `initialFocus` prop typedefs to `EuiModal` and `EuiPopover` ([#1410](https://github.com/elastic/eui/pull/1410))
 
+**Bug fixes**
+
+- Support extended characters (e.g. non-latin, unicode) in `EuiSearchBar` and `EuiQuery` ([#1415](https://github.com/elastic/eui/pull/1415))
+
 ## [`6.2.0`](https://github.com/elastic/eui/tree/v6.2.0)
 
 - Added `logoCodesandbox` and updated `apmApp` icons ([#1407](https://github.com/elastic/eui/pull/1407))
diff --git a/src/components/search_bar/query/default_syntax.js b/src/components/search_bar/query/default_syntax.js
index 3bced52e84d..d2496088a2c 100644
--- a/src/components/search_bar/query/default_syntax.js
+++ b/src/components/search_bar/query/default_syntax.js
@@ -129,6 +129,16 @@ wordChar
   = alnum
   / [-_*:]
   / escapedChar
+  / extendedGlyph
+  
+// This isn't _strictly_ correct:
+// for our purposes, a non-ascii word character is considered to
+// be anything above \`Latin-1 Punctuation & Symbols\`, which ends at U+00BF
+// This allows any non-ascii character, including the full set of unicode characters
+// even those in the supplementary planes (U+010000 → U+10FFFF) as those will be seen individually
+// in their surrogate pairs which are of the format /[\uD800-\uDBFF][\uDC00-\uDFFF]/
+extendedGlyph
+  = [\u00C0-\uFFFF]
 
 escapedChar
   = "\\\\" reservedChar
diff --git a/src/components/search_bar/query/default_syntax.test.js b/src/components/search_bar/query/default_syntax.test.js
index 9805d5f81a2..8b2a59ea6fe 100644
--- a/src/components/search_bar/query/default_syntax.test.js
+++ b/src/components/search_bar/query/default_syntax.test.js
@@ -68,6 +68,28 @@ describe('defaultSyntax', () => {
     expect(clause.value).toBe('dash-3');
   });
 
+  test('unicode field and term values', () => {
+    const query = 'name:👸Queen_Elizabeth 🤴King_Henry';
+    const ast = defaultSyntax.parse(query);
+
+    expect(ast).toBeDefined();
+    expect(ast.clauses).toBeDefined();
+    expect(ast.clauses).toHaveLength(2);
+
+    let clause = ast.getSimpleFieldClause('name', '👸Queen_Elizabeth');
+    expect(clause).toBeDefined();
+    expect(AST.Field.isInstance(clause)).toBe(true);
+    expect(AST.Match.isMustClause(clause)).toBe(true);
+    expect(clause.field).toBe('name');
+    expect(clause.value).toBe('👸Queen_Elizabeth');
+
+    clause = ast.getTermClause('🤴King_Henry');
+    expect(clause).toBeDefined();
+    expect(AST.Term.isInstance(clause)).toBe(true);
+    expect(AST.Match.isMustClause(clause)).toBe(true);
+    expect(clause.value).toBe('🤴King_Henry');
+  });
+
   test('escaped chars as default clauses', () => {
     const query = '-\\: \\\\';
     const ast = defaultSyntax.parse(query);