diff --git a/app-editors/emacs-vcs/emacs-vcs-27.0.9999.ebuild b/app-editors/emacs-vcs/emacs-vcs-27.0.9999.ebuild
index 37177094d50c2..570eb37e422f0 100644
--- a/app-editors/emacs-vcs/emacs-vcs-27.0.9999.ebuild
+++ b/app-editors/emacs-vcs/emacs-vcs-27.0.9999.ebuild
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ HOMEPAGE="https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/"
 
 LICENSE="GPL-3+ FDL-1.3+ BSD HPND MIT W3C unicode PSF-2"
 SLOT="27"
-IUSE="acl alsa aqua athena cairo dbus dynamic-loading games gconf gfile gif +gmp gpm gsettings gtk gtk2 gzip-el imagemagick +inotify jpeg json kerberos lcms libxml2 livecd m17n-lib mailutils motif png selinux sound source ssl svg systemd +threads tiff toolkit-scroll-bars wide-int X Xaw3d xft +xpm xwidgets zlib"
+IUSE="acl alsa aqua athena cairo dbus dynamic-loading games gconf gfile gif +gmp gpm gsettings gtk gtk2 gzip-el harfbuzz imagemagick +inotify jpeg json kerberos lcms libxml2 livecd m17n-lib mailutils motif png selinux sound source ssl svg systemd +threads tiff toolkit-scroll-bars wide-int X Xaw3d xft +xpm xwidgets zlib"
 REQUIRED_USE="?? ( aqua X )"
 RESTRICT="test"
 
@@ -77,6 +77,7 @@ RDEPEND="sys-libs/ncurses:0=
 			x11-libs/libXft
 			x11-libs/libXrender
 			cairo? ( >=x11-libs/cairo-1.12.18 )
+			harfbuzz? ( media-libs/harfbuzz:0= )
 			m17n-lib? (
 				>=dev-libs/libotf-0.9.4
 				>=dev-libs/m17n-lib-1.5.1
@@ -188,6 +189,7 @@ src_configure() {
 		if use xft; then
 			myconf+=" --with-xft"
 			myconf+=" $(use_with cairo)"
+			myconf+=" $(use_with harfbuzz)"
 			myconf+=" $(use_with m17n-lib libotf)"
 			myconf+=" $(use_with m17n-lib m17n-flt)"
 		else
diff --git a/app-editors/emacs-vcs/metadata.xml b/app-editors/emacs-vcs/metadata.xml
index d60762a414da3..0ae048b21bd47 100644
--- a/app-editors/emacs-vcs/metadata.xml
+++ b/app-editors/emacs-vcs/metadata.xml
@@ -34,6 +34,8 @@
   <flag name="gtk2">Prefer version 2 of the GIMP Toolkit to version 3
     (<pkg>x11-libs/gtk+</pkg>)</flag>
   <flag name="gzip-el">Compress bundled Emacs Lisp source</flag>
+  <flag name="harfbuzz">Use <pkg>media-libs/harfbuzz</pkg> as text shaping
+    engine</flag>
   <flag name="imagemagick">Use <pkg>media-gfx/imagemagick</pkg> for image
     processing</flag>
   <flag name="json">Compile with native JSON support using