diff --git a/plugins/in_tail/tail_config.c b/plugins/in_tail/tail_config.c
index be28410dc4a..e5095b254ad 100644
--- a/plugins/in_tail/tail_config.c
+++ b/plugins/in_tail/tail_config.c
@@ -77,6 +77,18 @@ static int multiline_load_parsers(struct flb_tail_config *ctx)
     return 0;
 }
 
+static void adjust_buffer_for_2bytes_alignments(struct flb_tail_config *ctx)
+{
+    if ((ctx->buf_max_size - 1) % 2) {
+        ctx->buf_max_size++;
+        flb_plg_info(ctx->ins, "adjusted buf_max_size to %zd", ctx->buf_max_size);
+    }
+    if ((ctx->buf_chunk_size - 1) % 2) {
+        ctx->buf_chunk_size++;
+        flb_plg_info(ctx->ins, "adjusted buf_chunk_size to %zd", ctx->buf_chunk_size);
+    }
+}
+
 struct flb_tail_config *flb_tail_config_create(struct flb_input_instance *ins,
                                                struct flb_config *config)
 {
@@ -190,14 +202,17 @@ struct flb_tail_config *flb_tail_config_create(struct flb_input_instance *ins,
     if (tmp) {
         if (strcasecmp(tmp, "auto") == 0) {
             ctx->preferred_input_encoding = FLB_SIMDUTF_ENCODING_TYPE_UNICODE_AUTO;
+            adjust_buffer_for_2bytes_alignments(ctx);
         }
         else if (strcasecmp(tmp, "utf-16le") == 0 ||
                  strcasecmp(tmp, "utf16-le") == 0) {
             ctx->preferred_input_encoding = FLB_SIMDUTF_ENCODING_TYPE_UTF16_LE;
+            adjust_buffer_for_2bytes_alignments(ctx);
         }
         else if (strcasecmp(tmp, "utf-16be") == 0 ||
                  strcasecmp(tmp, "utf16-be") == 0) {
             ctx->preferred_input_encoding = FLB_SIMDUTF_ENCODING_TYPE_UTF16_BE;
+            adjust_buffer_for_2bytes_alignments(ctx);
         }
         else {
             flb_plg_error(ctx->ins, "invalid encoding 'unicode.encoding' value");