diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 9daa87d2f2c..74af505659e 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@
 * [BUGFIX] Store Gateway: Fix the Parquet bucket store ignoring query sharding, which made every shard return all series. #7892
 * [BUGFIX] Querier: Fix the querier crashing instead of reporting the error when a blocks store set subservice fails. `blocksStoreReplicationSet` never initialised its `FailureWatcher`, so the failure callback dereferenced a nil pointer on the goroutine the service manager runs listeners on, and the resulting panic's stack trace buried the error logged for the actual cause. #7896
 * [BUGFIX] Compactor: Delete block deletion markers left in the global `markers/` location of a tenant after the block they refer to was removed. They were skipped at every bucket index update and kept the tenant location in the bucket forever. #7890
+* [BUGFIX] TLS: Fail client TLS setup with an error when the file set by a `-<prefix>.tls-ca-path` flag holds no PEM-encoded certificates. Before, the CA pool was left empty and every connection failed later with `certificate signed by unknown authority`. #7908
 
 ## 1.22.0 in progress
 * [CHANGE] Ruler: Remove the deprecated `-ruler.evaluation-delay-duration` flag and its `ruler_evaluation_delay_duration` per-tenant limit. Use `-ruler.query-offset` / `ruler_query_offset`, which no longer takes the higher of the two values. Cortex decodes the runtime config strictly, so a leftover `ruler_evaluation_delay_duration` override makes the runtime config fail to load: Cortex **exits at startup** (`module failed`, `module=runtime-config`), and on an already-running process every reload fails, pinning the last good overrides and dropping `cortex_runtime_config_last_reload_successful` to 0. Run `grep -r ruler_evaluation_delay_duration` over your runtime configs before upgrading. #7792
diff --git a/pkg/util/tls/tls.go b/pkg/util/tls/tls.go
index b89f1c6d6fb..a27d0a3b3dd 100644
--- a/pkg/util/tls/tls.go
+++ b/pkg/util/tls/tls.go
@@ -50,7 +50,9 @@ func (cfg *ClientConfig) GetTLSConfig() (*tls.Config, error) {
 			return nil, errors.Wrapf(err, "error loading ca cert: %s", cfg.CAPath)
 		}
 		caCertPool = x509.NewCertPool()
-		caCertPool.AppendCertsFromPEM(caCert)
+		if !caCertPool.AppendCertsFromPEM(caCert) {
+			return nil, errors.Errorf("no valid PEM-encoded CA certificates found in ca cert: %s", cfg.CAPath)
+		}
 
 		config.RootCAs = caCertPool
 	}
diff --git a/pkg/util/tls/tls_test.go b/pkg/util/tls/tls_test.go
index 0430cad98f7..7b8f0e4e4d4 100644
--- a/pkg/util/tls/tls_test.go
+++ b/pkg/util/tls/tls_test.go
@@ -165,6 +165,23 @@ func TestGetTLSConfig_CA(t *testing.T) {
 	_, err = c.GetTLSConfig()
 	assert.Error(t, err)
 	assert.Contains(t, err.Error(), "error loading ca cert")
+
+	// expect an error when the CA file holds no PEM certificates
+	for name, content := range map[string][]byte{
+		"empty":    {},
+		"not PEM":  []byte("not a certificate"),
+		"key only": []byte(keyPEM),
+	} {
+		t.Run(name, func(t *testing.T) {
+			paths := newTestX509Files(t, nil, nil, content)
+			c := &ClientConfig{
+				CAPath: paths.ca,
+			}
+			_, err := c.GetTLSConfig()
+			require.Error(t, err)
+			assert.Contains(t, err.Error(), "no valid PEM-encoded CA certificates found")
+		})
+	}
 }
 
 func TestGetTLSConfig_InsecureSkipVerify(t *testing.T) {