diff --git a/UPDATING b/UPDATING
--- a/UPDATING
+++ b/UPDATING
@@ -27,6 +27,12 @@
 	world, or to merely disable the most expensive debugging functionality
 	at runtime, run "ln -s 'abort:false,junk:false' /etc/malloc.conf".)
 
+20250907:
+	The MANSPLITPKG knob has been turned off by default, so pkgbase builds
+	will no longer generate "-man" subpackages; instead the manpages will
+	be shipped in the packages they belong to.  If you want to continue
+	building split man packages, set WITH_MANSPLITPKG=1.
+
 20250905:
 	FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT.
 
diff --git a/share/man/man5/src.conf.5 b/share/man/man5/src.conf.5
--- a/share/man/man5/src.conf.5
+++ b/share/man/man5/src.conf.5
@@ -1215,8 +1215,8 @@
 .It Va WITHOUT_MANCOMPRESS
 Do not install compressed man pages.
 Only the uncompressed versions will be installed.
-.It Va WITHOUT_MANSPLITPKG
-Do not split man pages into their own packages during make package.
+.It Va WITH_MANSPLITPKG
+Split man pages into their own packages during make package.
 .It Va WITHOUT_MAN_UTILS
 Do not build utilities for manual pages,
 .Xr apropos 1 ,
diff --git a/share/mk/bsd.opts.mk b/share/mk/bsd.opts.mk
--- a/share/mk/bsd.opts.mk
+++ b/share/mk/bsd.opts.mk
@@ -60,7 +60,6 @@
     MAKE_CHECK_USE_SANDBOX \
     MAN \
     MANCOMPRESS \
-    MANSPLITPKG \
     NIS \
     NLS \
     OPENSSH \
@@ -78,6 +77,7 @@
     CCACHE_BUILD \
     CTF \
     INSTALL_AS_USER \
+    MANSPLITPKG \
     REPRODUCIBLE_BUILD \
     RETPOLINE \
     RUN_TESTS \