diff --git a/gio/gdbusaddress.c b/gio/gdbusaddress.c
index 615722978..c8c432e09 100644
--- a/gio/gdbusaddress.c
+++ b/gio/gdbusaddress.c
@@ -1337,7 +1337,10 @@ g_dbus_address_get_for_bus_sync (GBusType       bus_type,
 
       if (ret == NULL)
         {
-          ret = g_strdup ("unix:path=/var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket");
+          /* While the D-Bus specification says this must be `/var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket`,
+           * a footnote allows it to use localstatedir:
+           * https://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-specification.html#ftn.id-1.13.6.4.3.3 */
+          ret = g_strdup ("unix:path=" GLIB_LOCALSTATEDIR "/run/dbus/system_bus_socket");
         }
       break;
 
diff --git a/meson.build b/meson.build
index 422e30653..773cc7b05 100644
--- a/meson.build
+++ b/meson.build
@@ -2109,6 +2109,8 @@ glib_conf.set('HAVE_GETTEXT', 1)
 
 glib_conf.set_quoted('GLIB_LOCALE_DIR', join_paths(glib_datadir, 'locale'))
 
+glib_conf.set_quoted('GLIB_LOCALSTATEDIR', glib_localstatedir)
+
 # libmount is only used by gio, but we need to fetch the libs to generate the
 # pkg-config file below
 libmount_dep = []