diff --git a/Doc/library/urllib.parse.rst b/Doc/library/urllib.parse.rst
index 676321b46a2..7a5b56f5da6 100644
--- a/Doc/library/urllib.parse.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/urllib.parse.rst
@@ -451,13 +451,17 @@ task isn't already covered by the URL parsing functions above.
 .. function:: quote(string, safe='/', encoding=None, errors=None)
 
    Replace special characters in *string* using the ``%xx`` escape. Letters,
-   digits, and the characters ``'_.-'`` are never quoted. By default, this
+   digits, and the characters ``'_.-~'`` are never quoted. By default, this
    function is intended for quoting the path section of URL. The optional *safe*
    parameter specifies additional ASCII characters that should not be quoted
    --- its default value is ``'/'``.
 
    *string* may be either a :class:`str` or a :class:`bytes`.
 
+   .. versionchanged:: 3.7
+      Moved from RFC 2396 to RFC 3986 for quoting URL strings. "~" is now
+      included in the set of reserved characters.
+
    The optional *encoding* and *errors* parameters specify how to deal with
    non-ASCII characters, as accepted by the :meth:`str.encode` method.
    *encoding* defaults to ``'utf-8'``.
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/3.7.rst b/Doc/whatsnew/3.7.rst
index 861c53728ee..35eea84e0a6 100644
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/3.7.rst
+++ b/Doc/whatsnew/3.7.rst
@@ -103,6 +103,13 @@ The :const:`~unittest.mock.sentinel` attributes now preserve their identity
 when they are :mod:`copied <copy>` or :mod:`pickled <pickle>`.
 (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`20804`.)
 
+urllib.parse
+------------
+
+:func:`urllib.parse.quote` has been updated to from RFC 2396 to RFC 3986,
+adding `~` to the set of characters that is never quoted by default.
+(Contributed by Christian Theune and Ratnadeep Debnath in :issue:`16285`.)
+
 
 Optimizations
 =============
diff --git a/Lib/test/test_urllib.py b/Lib/test/test_urllib.py
index 5084486e5ab..bffbb0a8d1e 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_urllib.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_urllib.py
@@ -733,7 +733,7 @@ FF
 class QuotingTests(unittest.TestCase):
     r"""Tests for urllib.quote() and urllib.quote_plus()
 
-    According to RFC 2396 (Uniform Resource Identifiers), to escape a
+    According to RFC 3986 (Uniform Resource Identifiers), to escape a
     character you write it as '%' + <2 character US-ASCII hex value>.
     The Python code of ``'%' + hex(ord(<character>))[2:]`` escapes a
     character properly. Case does not matter on the hex letters.
@@ -761,7 +761,7 @@ class QuotingTests(unittest.TestCase):
         do_not_quote = '' .join(["ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ",
                                  "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz",
                                  "0123456789",
-                                 "_.-"])
+                                 "_.-~"])
         result = urllib.parse.quote(do_not_quote)
         self.assertEqual(do_not_quote, result,
                          "using quote(): %r != %r" % (do_not_quote, result))
diff --git a/Lib/urllib/parse.py b/Lib/urllib/parse.py
index 1d08730a89f..f3a309aacc2 100644
--- a/Lib/urllib/parse.py
+++ b/Lib/urllib/parse.py
@@ -704,7 +704,7 @@ def unquote_plus(string, encoding='utf-8', errors='replace'):
 _ALWAYS_SAFE = frozenset(b'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
                          b'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
                          b'0123456789'
-                         b'_.-')
+                         b'_.-~')
 _ALWAYS_SAFE_BYTES = bytes(_ALWAYS_SAFE)
 _safe_quoters = {}
 
@@ -736,15 +736,18 @@ def quote(string, safe='/', encoding=None, errors=None):
     Each part of a URL, e.g. the path info, the query, etc., has a
     different set of reserved characters that must be quoted.
 
-    RFC 2396 Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax lists
+    RFC 3986 Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax lists
     the following reserved characters.
 
     reserved    = ";" | "/" | "?" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" |
-                  "$" | ","
+                  "$" | "," | "~"
 
     Each of these characters is reserved in some component of a URL,
     but not necessarily in all of them.
 
+    Python 3.7 updates from using RFC 2396 to RFC 3986 to quote URL strings.
+    Now, "~" is included in the set of reserved characters.
+
     By default, the quote function is intended for quoting the path
     section of a URL.  Thus, it will not encode '/'.  This character
     is reserved, but in typical usage the quote function is being
diff --git a/Misc/ACKS b/Misc/ACKS
index e63a061098e..255318e5724 100644
--- a/Misc/ACKS
+++ b/Misc/ACKS
@@ -344,6 +344,7 @@ Kushal Das
 Jonathan Dasteel
 Pierre-Yves David
 A. Jesse Jiryu Davis
+Ratnadeep Debnath
 Merlijn van Deen
 John DeGood
 Ned Deily
@@ -1518,6 +1519,7 @@ Mikhail Terekhov
 Victor Terrón
 Richard M. Tew
 Tobias Thelen
+Christian Theune
 Févry Thibault
 Lowe Thiderman
 Nicolas M. Thiéry
@@ -1528,7 +1530,7 @@ Stephen Thorne
 Jeremy Thurgood
 Eric Tiedemann
 July Tikhonov
-Tracy Tims
+    Tracy Tims
 Oren Tirosh
 Tim Tisdall
 Jason Tishler
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index e7ab3df8d77..74ec8c3bdf2 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -249,6 +249,10 @@ Extension Modules
 Library
 -------
 
+- Issue #16285: urrlib.parse.quote is now based on RFC 3986 and hence includes
+  '~' in the set of characters that is not quoted by default. Patch by
+  Christian Theune and Ratnadeep Debnath.
+
 - bpo-29532: Altering a kwarg dictionary passed to functools.partial()
   no longer affects a partial object after creation.
 
