diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/305-docker_compose-errors-warnings.yml b/changelogs/fragments/305-docker_compose-errors-warnings.yml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..0ee0352e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/fragments/305-docker_compose-errors-warnings.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+bugfixes:
+  - "docker_compose - fix Python 3 type error when extracting warnings or errors from docker-compose's output (https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.docker/pull/305)."
diff --git a/plugins/modules/docker_compose.py b/plugins/modules/docker_compose.py
index 2f692609..e34beeb6 100644
--- a/plugins/modules/docker_compose.py
+++ b/plugins/modules/docker_compose.py
@@ -587,8 +587,8 @@ def attempt_extract_errors(exc_str, stdout, stderr):
         msg = 'unknown cause'
 
     return {
-        'warnings': [w.encode('utf-8') for w in warnings],
-        'errors': [e.encode('utf-8') for e in errors],
+        'warnings': [to_native(w) for w in warnings],
+        'errors': [to_native(e) for e in errors],
         'msg': msg,
         'module_stderr': ''.join(stderr),
         'module_stdout': ''.join(stdout)