diff --git a/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Windows/2019-07-29-16-49-31.bpo-37702.Lj2f5e.rst b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Windows/2019-07-29-16-49-31.bpo-37702.Lj2f5e.rst
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..67d53d4c462
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Misc/NEWS.d/next/Windows/2019-07-29-16-49-31.bpo-37702.Lj2f5e.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Fix memory leak on Windows in creating an SSLContext object or
+running urllib.request.urlopen('https://...').
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Modules/_ssl.c b/Modules/_ssl.c
index 3d63612168b..d94efa98e95 100644
--- a/Modules/_ssl.c
+++ b/Modules/_ssl.c
@@ -5581,6 +5581,7 @@ ssl_collect_certificates(const char *store_name)
             if (result) {
                 ++storesAdded;
             }
+            CertCloseStore(hSystemStore, 0);  /* flag must be 0 */
         }
     }
     if (storesAdded == 0) {