diff --git a/fs/eventpoll.c b/fs/eventpoll.c
index 882b89edc52adb24e6f62dc2b778e186001293d4..f53ca4f7fceddd0b0e661f05105435b420e19430 100644
--- a/fs/eventpoll.c
+++ b/fs/eventpoll.c
@@ -979,6 +979,34 @@ static __poll_t __ep_eventpoll_poll(struct file *file, poll_table *wait, int dep
 	return res;
 }
 
+/*
+ * The ffd.file pointer may be in the process of being torn down due to
+ * being closed, but we may not have finished eventpoll_release() yet.
+ *
+ * Normally, even with the atomic_long_inc_not_zero, the file may have
+ * been free'd and then gotten re-allocated to something else (since
+ * files are not RCU-delayed, they are SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU).
+ *
+ * But for epoll, users hold the ep->mtx mutex, and as such any file in
+ * the process of being free'd will block in eventpoll_release_file()
+ * and thus the underlying file allocation will not be free'd, and the
+ * file re-use cannot happen.
+ *
+ * For the same reason we can avoid a rcu_read_lock() around the
+ * operation - 'ffd.file' cannot go away even if the refcount has
+ * reached zero (but we must still not call out to ->poll() functions
+ * etc).
+ */
+static struct file *epi_fget(const struct epitem *epi)
+{
+	struct file *file;
+
+	file = epi->ffd.file;
+	if (!atomic_long_inc_not_zero(&file->f_count))
+		file = NULL;
+	return file;
+}
+
 /*
  * Differs from ep_eventpoll_poll() in that internal callers already have
  * the ep->mtx so we need to start from depth=1, such that mutex_lock_nested()
@@ -987,14 +1015,22 @@ static __poll_t __ep_eventpoll_poll(struct file *file, poll_table *wait, int dep
 static __poll_t ep_item_poll(const struct epitem *epi, poll_table *pt,
 				 int depth)
 {
-	struct file *file = epi->ffd.file;
+	struct file *file = epi_fget(epi);
 	__poll_t res;
 
+	/*
+	 * We could return EPOLLERR | EPOLLHUP or something, but let's
+	 * treat this more as "file doesn't exist, poll didn't happen".
+	 */
+	if (!file)
+		return 0;
+
 	pt->_key = epi->event.events;
 	if (!is_file_epoll(file))
 		res = vfs_poll(file, pt);
 	else
 		res = __ep_eventpoll_poll(file, pt, depth);
+	fput(file);
 	return res & epi->event.events;
 }