diff --git a/tornado/test/web_test.py b/tornado/test/web_test.py
index c292b419..f65b1f68 100644
--- a/tornado/test/web_test.py
+++ b/tornado/test/web_test.py
@@ -670,3 +670,19 @@ class CustomStaticFileTest(AsyncHTTPTestCase, LogTrapTestCase):
     def test_static_url(self):
         response = self.fetch("/static_url/foo.txt")
         self.assertEqual(response.body, b("/static/foo.42.txt"))
+
+class NamedURLSpecGroupsTest(AsyncHTTPTestCase, LogTrapTestCase):
+    def get_app(self):
+        class EchoHandler(RequestHandler):
+            def get(self, path):
+                self.write(path)
+
+        return Application([("/str/(?P<path>.*)", EchoHandler),
+                            (u"/unicode/(?P<path>.*)", EchoHandler)])
+
+    def test_named_urlspec_groups(self):
+        response = self.fetch("/str/foo")
+        self.assertEqual(response.body, b("foo"))
+
+        response = self.fetch("/unicode/bar")
+        self.assertEqual(response.body, b("bar"))
diff --git a/website/sphinx/releases/next.rst b/website/sphinx/releases/next.rst
index a6c7faf4..1a47759f 100644
--- a/website/sphinx/releases/next.rst
+++ b/website/sphinx/releases/next.rst
@@ -13,3 +13,5 @@ In progress
   overwrite the previous cookie instead of producing additional copies.
 * `tornado.simple_httpclient` correctly verifies SSL certificates for
   URLs containing IPv6 literals (This bug affected Python 2.5 and 2.6).
+* Fixed a bug on python versions before 2.6.5 when `URLSpec` regexes
+  are constructed from unicode strings and keyword arguments are extracted.