diff --git a/CHANGELOG-developer.next.asciidoc b/CHANGELOG-developer.next.asciidoc
index e8ab8e7f82d7..ccbe92355ae4 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG-developer.next.asciidoc
+++ b/CHANGELOG-developer.next.asciidoc
@@ -35,3 +35,4 @@ The list below covers the major changes between 7.0.0-beta1 and master only.
 - Assertion for documented fields in tests fails if any of the fields in the tested event is documented as an alias. {pull}10921[10921]
 - Support for Logger in the Metricset base instance. {pull}11106[11106]
 - Introduce processing.Support to instance.Setting. This allows Beats to fully modify the event processing. {pull}10801[10801]
+- Filebeat modules can now use ingest pipelines in YAML format. {pull}11209[11209]
diff --git a/docs/devguide/modules-dev-guide.asciidoc b/docs/devguide/modules-dev-guide.asciidoc
index ddb1932a403e..eb15ae54d185 100644
--- a/docs/devguide/modules-dev-guide.asciidoc
+++ b/docs/devguide/modules-dev-guide.asciidoc
@@ -308,7 +308,7 @@ The `ingest/` folder contains Elasticsearch
 Node pipelines are responsible for parsing the log lines and doing other
 manipulations on the data.
 
-The files in this folder are JSON documents representing
+The files in this folder are JSON or YAML documents representing
 {ref}/pipeline.html[pipeline definitions]. Just like with the `config/`
 folder, you can define multiple pipelines, but a single one is loaded at runtime
 based on the information from `manifest.yml`.
@@ -330,6 +330,18 @@ The generator creates a JSON object similar to this one:
 }
 ----
 
+Alternatively, you can use YAML formatted pipelines, which uses a simpler syntax:
+
+[source,yaml]
+----
+description: "Pipeline for parsing {module} {fileset} logs"
+processors:
+on_failure:
+ - set:
+     field: error.message
+     value: "{{ _ingest.on_failure_message }}"
+----
+
 From here, you would typically add processors to the `processors` array to do
 the actual parsing. For details on how to use ingest node processors, see the
 {ref}/ingest-processors.html[ingest node documentation]. In
@@ -407,7 +419,7 @@ file. The first pipeline in the list is considered to be the entry point pipelin
 ----
 ingest_pipeline:
   - ingest/main.json
-  - ingest/plain_logs.json
+  - ingest/plain_logs.yml
   - ingest/json_logs.json
 ----
 
diff --git a/filebeat/fileset/fileset.go b/filebeat/fileset/fileset.go
index e4f50407ac28..d1867b64b8eb 100644
--- a/filebeat/fileset/fileset.go
+++ b/filebeat/fileset/fileset.go
@@ -35,6 +35,7 @@ import (
 	"text/template"
 
 	errw "github.com/pkg/errors"
+	"gopkg.in/yaml.v2"
 
 	"github.com/elastic/beats/libbeat/common"
 	"github.com/elastic/beats/libbeat/common/cfgwarn"
@@ -421,15 +422,28 @@ func (fs *Fileset) GetPipelines(esVersion common.Version) (pipelines []pipeline,
 			return nil, fmt.Errorf("Error reading pipeline file %s: %v", path, err)
 		}
 
-		jsonString, err := applyTemplate(vars, string(strContents), true)
+		encodedString, err := applyTemplate(vars, string(strContents), true)
 		if err != nil {
 			return nil, fmt.Errorf("Error interpreting the template of the ingest pipeline: %v", err)
 		}
 
 		var content map[string]interface{}
-		err = json.Unmarshal([]byte(jsonString), &content)
-		if err != nil {
-			return nil, fmt.Errorf("Error JSON decoding the pipeline file: %s: %v", path, err)
+		switch extension := strings.ToLower(filepath.Ext(path)); extension {
+		case ".json":
+			if err = json.Unmarshal([]byte(encodedString), &content); err != nil {
+				return nil, fmt.Errorf("Error JSON decoding the pipeline file: %s: %v", path, err)
+			}
+		case ".yaml", ".yml":
+			if err = yaml.Unmarshal([]byte(encodedString), &content); err != nil {
+				return nil, fmt.Errorf("Error YAML decoding the pipeline file: %s: %v", path, err)
+			}
+			newContent, err := fixYAMLMaps(content)
+			if err != nil {
+				return nil, fmt.Errorf("Failed to sanitize the YAML pipeline file: %s: %v", path, err)
+			}
+			content = newContent.(map[string]interface{})
+		default:
+			return nil, fmt.Errorf("Unsupported extension '%s' for pipeline file: %s", extension, path)
 		}
 
 		pipelineID := fs.pipelineIDs[idx]
@@ -444,6 +458,40 @@ func (fs *Fileset) GetPipelines(esVersion common.Version) (pipelines []pipeline,
 	return pipelines, nil
 }
 
+// This function recursively converts maps with interface{} keys, as returned by
+// yaml.Unmarshal, to maps of string keys, as expected by the json encoder
+// that will be used when delivering the pipeline to Elasticsearch.
+// Will return an error when something other than a string is used as a key.
+func fixYAMLMaps(elem interface{}) (_ interface{}, err error) {
+	switch v := elem.(type) {
+	case map[interface{}]interface{}:
+		result := make(map[string]interface{}, len(v))
+		for key, value := range v {
+			keyS, ok := key.(string)
+			if !ok {
+				return nil, fmt.Errorf("key '%v' is not string but %T", key, key)
+			}
+			if result[keyS], err = fixYAMLMaps(value); err != nil {
+				return nil, err
+			}
+		}
+		return result, nil
+	case map[string]interface{}:
+		for key, value := range v {
+			if v[key], err = fixYAMLMaps(value); err != nil {
+				return nil, err
+			}
+		}
+	case []interface{}:
+		for idx, value := range v {
+			if v[idx], err = fixYAMLMaps(value); err != nil {
+				return nil, err
+			}
+		}
+	}
+	return elem, nil
+}
+
 // formatPipelineID generates the ID to be used for the pipeline ID in Elasticsearch
 func formatPipelineID(module, fileset, path, beatVersion string) string {
 	return fmt.Sprintf("filebeat-%s-%s-%s-%s", beatVersion, module, fileset, removeExt(filepath.Base(path)))