diff --git a/spacy/language_data/tokenizer_exceptions.py b/spacy/language_data/tokenizer_exceptions.py
index 7d623cbb3..f01c2fdf5 100644
--- a/spacy/language_data/tokenizer_exceptions.py
+++ b/spacy/language_data/tokenizer_exceptions.py
@@ -45,6 +45,6 @@ _URL_PATTERN = (
     r"$"
 ).strip()
 
-TOKEN_MATCH = re.compile(_URL_PATTERN).match
+TOKEN_MATCH = re.compile(_URL_PATTERN, re.UNICODE).match
 
 __all__ = ['TOKEN_MATCH']