diff --git a/test/e2e/framework/test_context.go b/test/e2e/framework/test_context.go
index 400a043077a..6108cddf740 100644
--- a/test/e2e/framework/test_context.go
+++ b/test/e2e/framework/test_context.go
@@ -530,6 +530,14 @@ func AfterReadingAllFlags(t *TestContextType) {
 	}
 }
 
+const (
+	// This is the traditional gomega.Format default of 4000 for an object
+	// dump plus some extra room for the message.
+	maxFailureMessageSize = 5000
+
+	truncatedMsg = "\n[... see output for full dump ...]\n"
+)
+
 // writeJUnitReport generates a JUnit file in the e2e report directory that is
 // shorter than the one normally written by `ginkgo --junit-report`. This is
 // needed because the full report can become too large for tools like Spyglass
@@ -546,6 +554,18 @@ func writeJUnitReport(report ginkgo.Report) {
 		if specReport.State != types.SpecStateFailed {
 			specReport.CapturedGinkgoWriterOutput = ""
 			specReport.CapturedStdOutErr = ""
+		} else {
+			// Truncate the failure message if it is too large.
+			msgLen := len(specReport.Failure.Message)
+			if msgLen > maxFailureMessageSize {
+				// Insert full message at the beginning where it is easy to find.
+				specReport.CapturedGinkgoWriterOutput =
+					"Full failure message:\n" +
+						specReport.Failure.Message + "\n\n" +
+						strings.Repeat("=", 70) + "\n\n" +
+						specReport.CapturedGinkgoWriterOutput
+				specReport.Failure.Message = specReport.Failure.Message[0:maxFailureMessageSize/2] + truncatedMsg + specReport.Failure.Message[msgLen-maxFailureMessageSize/2:msgLen]
+			}
 		}
 
 		// Remove report entries generated by ginkgo.By("doing