diff --git a/CHANGELOG b/CHANGELOG
index 31feb115d1e8599c2b49aab7178c173c365044d9..f078d08d86b6c1ff8f6780dfab4f186d858935ca 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG
+++ b/CHANGELOG
@@ -90,6 +90,8 @@ v 8.0.1
 v 8.0.0
   - Fix Markdown links not showing up in dashboard activity feed (Stan Hu)
   - Remove milestones from merge requests when milestones are deleted (Stan Hu)
+v 8.0.0 (unreleased)
+  - Accept COPYING as licence file (Zeger-Jan van de Weg)
   - Fix HTML link that was improperly escaped in new user e-mail (Stan Hu)
   - Fix broken sort in merge request API (Stan Hu)
   - Bump rouge to 1.10.1 to remove warning noise and fix other syntax highlighting bugs (Stan Hu)
diff --git a/app/models/repository.rb b/app/models/repository.rb
index 8b51602bc2363c306ce323b13644633fcbc15013..cc46ab916c70560333ae5f1b8bec43ff2fdb0fd2 100644
--- a/app/models/repository.rb
+++ b/app/models/repository.rb
@@ -210,9 +210,9 @@ class Repository
 
   def license
     cache.fetch(:license) do
-      tree(:head).blobs.find do |file|
-        file.name =~ /\Alicense/i
-      end
+      tree(:head).blobs.find_all do |file|
+        file.name =~ /\A(copying|license)/i
+      end.last # Prefer `LICENSE` as filename over `COPYING`
     end
   end