diff --git a/gas/config/tc-aarch64.c b/gas/config/tc-aarch64.c
index 89abdc62e4e97049856d6d22966b90ae147a52bf..3d0436d538c856a418f6949fb47998f69558b6fc 100644
--- a/gas/config/tc-aarch64.c
+++ b/gas/config/tc-aarch64.c
@@ -2170,6 +2170,9 @@ s_aarch64_capinit (int ignored ATTRIBUTE_UNUSED)
       return;
     }
 
+  /* align to 16 bytes. */
+  do_align (4, (char *) NULL, 0, 0);
+
   frag_grow (16);
   fix_new_aarch64 (frag_now, frag_more (0) - frag_now->fr_literal, 16, &exp, 0,
 		   BFD_RELOC_MORELLO_CAPINIT);
@@ -2193,6 +2196,9 @@ s_aarch64_chericap (int ignored ATTRIBUTE_UNUSED)
   md_flush_pending_output ();
 #endif
 
+  /* align to 16 bytes. */
+  do_align (4, (char *) NULL, 0, 0);
+
   frag_grow (16);
   fix_new_aarch64 (frag_now, frag_more (0) - frag_now->fr_literal, 16, &exp, 0,
 		   BFD_RELOC_MORELLO_CAPINIT);
diff --git a/gas/testsuite/gas/aarch64/morello-capinit-align.d b/gas/testsuite/gas/aarch64/morello-capinit-align.d
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..0193bd9071d841e269a5e44168937176d13c61d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/gas/testsuite/gas/aarch64/morello-capinit-align.d
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+#name: capinit and chericap automatically align
+#as: -march=armv8-a+c64
+#readelf: --relocs
+
+Relocation section '\.rela\.data' at offset 0x138 contains 4 entries:
+  Offset          Info           Type           Sym\. Value    Sym\. Name \+ Addend
+000000000010  00040000e800 R_MORELLO_CAPINIT 0000000000000000 f \+ 0
+000000000030  00040000e800 R_MORELLO_CAPINIT 0000000000000000 f \+ 0
+000000000040  00040000e800 R_MORELLO_CAPINIT 0000000000000000 f \+ 0
+000000000050  00040000e800 R_MORELLO_CAPINIT 0000000000000000 f \+ 0
diff --git a/gas/testsuite/gas/aarch64/morello-capinit-align.s b/gas/testsuite/gas/aarch64/morello-capinit-align.s
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..fce807b79103c9a2b16a8734a61582eb846b19ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/gas/testsuite/gas/aarch64/morello-capinit-align.s
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+.data
+f:
+// A few capability initialisation directives with a single byte to show the
+// padding gets introduced when needed.
+.byte 0
+.capinit f
+.xword 0
+.xword 0
+.byte 0
+.chericap f
+// A few directives without any bytes in between to show no extra padding gets
+// added when not needed.
+.chericap f
+.capinit f
+.xword 0
+.xword 0