diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index ee666068..c2c02c9e 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
 xbps-0.52 (???):
 
+ * xbps-uhelper: the 'arch' target now supports the XBPS_ARCH
+   and XBPS_TARGET_ARCH environmental variables to override the
+   resulting architecture.
+
  * portableproplib: merged two fixes from NetBSD CVS HEAD.
 
  * xbps-create(1): this now creates reproducible pkgs when the file
diff --git a/bin/xbps-uhelper/main.c b/bin/xbps-uhelper/main.c
index 2978e14e..7211b707 100644
--- a/bin/xbps-uhelper/main.c
+++ b/bin/xbps-uhelper/main.c
@@ -280,7 +280,11 @@ main(int argc, char **argv)
 		if (argc != 1)
 			usage();
 
-		printf("%s\n", xh.native_arch);
+		if (xh.native_arch && xh.target_arch && strcmp(xh.native_arch, xh.target_arch)) {
+			printf("%s\n", xh.target_arch);
+		} else {
+			printf("%s\n", xh.native_arch);
+		}
 	} else if (strcmp(argv[0], "getsystemdir") == 0) {
 		/* returns the xbps system directory (<sharedir>/xbps.d) */
 		if (argc != 1)