diff --git a/src/libfetchers/tarball.cc b/src/libfetchers/tarball.cc
index e19b18505..d03ff82ce 100644
--- a/src/libfetchers/tarball.cc
+++ b/src/libfetchers/tarball.cc
@@ -145,9 +145,27 @@ DownloadTarballResult downloadTarball(
 
     // TODO: fall back to cached value if download fails.
 
+    AutoDelete cleanupTemp;
+
     /* Note: if the download is cached, `importTarball()` will receive
        no data, which causes it to import an empty tarball. */
-    TarArchive archive { *source };
+    auto archive =
+        hasSuffix(toLower(parseURL(url).path), ".zip")
+        ? ({
+                /* In streaming mode, libarchive doesn't handle
+                   symlinks in zip files correctly (#10649). So write
+                   the entire file to disk so libarchive can access it
+                   in random-access mode. */
+                auto [fdTemp, path] = createTempFile("nix-zipfile");
+                cleanupTemp.reset(path);
+                debug("downloading '%s' into '%s'...", url, path);
+                {
+                    FdSink sink(fdTemp.get());
+                    source->drainInto(sink);
+                }
+                TarArchive{path};
+          })
+        : TarArchive{*source};
     auto parseSink = getTarballCache()->getFileSystemObjectSink();
     auto lastModified = unpackTarfileToSink(archive, *parseSink);
 
diff --git a/tests/functional/flakes/prefetch.sh b/tests/functional/flakes/prefetch.sh
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..bfd0533f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/functional/flakes/prefetch.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+source common.sh
+
+# Test symlinks in zip files (#10649).
+path=$(nix flake prefetch --json file://$(pwd)/tree.zip | jq -r .storePath)
+[[ $(cat $path/foo) = foo ]]
+[[ $(readlink $path/bar) = foo ]]
diff --git a/tests/functional/flakes/tree.zip b/tests/functional/flakes/tree.zip
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f9e4d225f
Binary files /dev/null and b/tests/functional/flakes/tree.zip differ
diff --git a/tests/functional/local.mk b/tests/functional/local.mk
index 021af096c..18b920f7d 100644
--- a/tests/functional/local.mk
+++ b/tests/functional/local.mk
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ nix_tests = \
   flakes/absolute-attr-paths.sh \
   flakes/build-paths.sh \
   flakes/flake-in-submodule.sh \
+  flakes/prefetch.sh \
   gc.sh \
   nix-collect-garbage-d.sh \
   remote-store.sh \