diff --git a/index.js b/index.js
index e6779f5f..764e0fc6 100644
--- a/index.js
+++ b/index.js
@@ -115,10 +115,11 @@ class HtmlWebpackPlugin {
 
     const minify = this.options.minify;
     if (minify === true || (minify === 'auto' && isProductionLikeMode)) {
-      /** @type { import('html-minifier').Options } */
+      /** @type { import('html-minifier-terser').Options } */
       this.options.minify = {
-        // https://github.com/kangax/html-minifier#options-quick-reference
+        // https://www.npmjs.com/package/html-minifier-terser#options-quick-reference
         collapseWhitespace: true,
+        keepClosingSlash: true,
         removeComments: true,
         removeRedundantAttributes: true,
         removeScriptTypeAttributes: true,
diff --git a/spec/basic.spec.js b/spec/basic.spec.js
index 5d706c47..5e95725a 100644
--- a/spec/basic.spec.js
+++ b/spec/basic.spec.js
@@ -2304,4 +2304,27 @@ describe('HtmlWebpackPlugin', () => {
       ]
     }, [/<script defer="defer".+<link href="styles.css"/], null, done);
   });
+
+  it('should keep closing slashes from the template', done => {
+    testHtmlPlugin({
+      mode: 'production',
+      entry: path.join(__dirname, 'fixtures/theme.js'),
+      output: {
+        path: OUTPUT_DIR,
+        filename: 'index_bundle.js'
+      },
+      module: {
+        rules: [
+          { test: /\.css$/, use: [MiniCssExtractPlugin.loader, 'css-loader'] }
+        ]
+      },
+      plugins: [
+        new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
+          scriptLoading: 'defer',
+          templateContent: '<html><body> <selfclosed /> </body></html>'
+        }),
+        new MiniCssExtractPlugin({ filename: 'styles.css' })
+      ]
+    }, [/<selfclosed\/>/], null, done);
+  });
 });
