diff --git a/lib/manager/gitlabci-include/__fixtures__/gitlab-ci.1.yaml b/lib/manager/gitlabci-include/__fixtures__/gitlab-ci.1.yaml
index 49b6ce2def6b9f..9f57e8ee9c8018 100644
--- a/lib/manager/gitlabci-include/__fixtures__/gitlab-ci.1.yaml
+++ b/lib/manager/gitlabci-include/__fixtures__/gitlab-ci.1.yaml
@@ -7,3 +7,7 @@ include:
     ref: master
 - {"project":"mikebryant/include-source-example3", "file": "/template.yaml",}
 - {}
+
+script:
+- !reference [.setup, script]
+- !reference [arbitrary job name with space and no starting dot, nested1, nested2, nested3]
diff --git a/lib/manager/gitlabci-include/extract.ts b/lib/manager/gitlabci-include/extract.ts
index b3ba608b47ea04..654f5db8efafaf 100644
--- a/lib/manager/gitlabci-include/extract.ts
+++ b/lib/manager/gitlabci-include/extract.ts
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ import yaml from 'js-yaml';
 import * as datasourceGitlabTags from '../../datasource/gitlab-tags';
 import { logger } from '../../logger';
 import { SkipReason } from '../../types';
+import { replaceReferenceTags } from '../gitlabci/utils';
 import type { ExtractConfig, PackageDependency, PackageFile } from '../types';
 
 function extractDepFromIncludeFile(includeObj: {
@@ -31,7 +32,9 @@ export function extractPackageFile(
   const deps: PackageDependency[] = [];
   try {
     // TODO: fix me (#9610)
-    const doc = yaml.safeLoad(content, { json: true }) as any;
+    const doc = yaml.safeLoad(replaceReferenceTags(content), {
+      json: true,
+    }) as any;
     if (doc?.include && is.array(doc.include)) {
       for (const includeObj of doc.include) {
         if (includeObj.file && includeObj.project) {
diff --git a/lib/manager/gitlabci/utils.ts b/lib/manager/gitlabci/utils.ts
index 1cb036baefd756..28124d3179d82e 100644
--- a/lib/manager/gitlabci/utils.ts
+++ b/lib/manager/gitlabci/utils.ts
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-const re = /!reference \[\.\w+?(?:, \w+?)\]/g;
+const re = /!reference \[(.*?)\]/g;
 
 /**
  * Replaces GitLab reference tags before parsing, because our yaml parser cannot process them anyway.