diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 895407e25..f8e527ad7 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -11,3 +11,6 @@
 # ignore roles pulled by ansible-galaxy
 /roles/galaxy/*
 !/roles/galaxy/.gitkeep
+
+# ignore Python bytecode caches (e.g. from running tests with `python -m unittest`)
+__pycache__/