diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 15849cfb09c2b40d4e1f181ae7f614ee117b1f86..6fe3934b51d1af8c8850f2720ae2e8e9717017d6 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@
 - Use pickling to store the dynesty resume file and add a write-to-resume on SIGINT/SIGKILL
 - Bug fix in ROQ likelihood
 - Distance and phase marginalisation work with ROQ likelihood
+- Cpnest now creates checkpoints (resume files) by default
 
 ### Removed
 -
diff --git a/bilby/core/sampler/cpnest.py b/bilby/core/sampler/cpnest.py
index 0936900f555d0f6ede2405f059b21837100c4409..0f1cd8780827756b25e4bbce9bbea064f9c2301d 100644
--- a/bilby/core/sampler/cpnest.py
+++ b/bilby/core/sampler/cpnest.py
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ class Cpnest(NestedSampler):
         The maximum number of MCMC steps to take
     verbose: Bool (True)
         If true, print information information about the convergence during
-    resume: Bool (False)
+    resume: Bool (True)
         Whether or not to resume from a previous run
     output: str
         Where to write the CPNest, by default this is
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ class Cpnest(NestedSampler):
 
     """
     default_kwargs = dict(verbose=1, nthreads=1, nlive=500, maxmcmc=1000,
-                          seed=None, poolsize=100, nhamiltonian=0, resume=False,
+                          seed=None, poolsize=100, nhamiltonian=0, resume=True,
                           output=None)
 
     def _translate_kwargs(self, kwargs):
diff --git a/test/sampler_test.py b/test/sampler_test.py
index 3054ad4ae52d57b88ae31e0dc217069d2c0c0f5b..b11997c4d5e24432eada67146dfaa497709b4c5a 100644
--- a/test/sampler_test.py
+++ b/test/sampler_test.py
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ class TestCPNest(unittest.TestCase):
 
     def test_default_kwargs(self):
         expected = dict(verbose=1, nthreads=1, nlive=500, maxmcmc=1000,
-                        seed=None, poolsize=100, nhamiltonian=0, resume=False,
+                        seed=None, poolsize=100, nhamiltonian=0, resume=True,
                         output='outdir/cpnest_label/')
         self.assertDictEqual(expected, self.sampler.kwargs)