diff --git a/tests/unit/test_verilog_tokenizer.py b/tests/unit/test_verilog_tokenizer.py
index 2ee006699..50e1b6f3c 100644
--- a/tests/unit/test_verilog_tokenizer.py
+++ b/tests/unit/test_verilog_tokenizer.py
@@ -31,6 +31,18 @@ def test_tokenizes_define(self):
             ],
         )
 
+    def test_newline_is_not_whitespace(self):
+        self.check(
+            " \n  \n\n",
+            [
+                WHITESPACE(value=" "),
+                NEWLINE(),
+                WHITESPACE(value="  "),
+                NEWLINE(),
+                NEWLINE(),
+            ],
+        )
+
     def test_tokenizes_string_literal(self):
         self.check('"hello"', [STRING(value="hello")])
 
diff --git a/vunit/parsing/verilog/tokenizer.py b/vunit/parsing/verilog/tokenizer.py
index 74b3cbe31..668a8cec6 100644
--- a/vunit/parsing/verilog/tokenizer.py
+++ b/vunit/parsing/verilog/tokenizer.py
@@ -67,7 +67,7 @@ def replace_keywords(token):  # pylint: disable=missing-docstring
 
         add(NEWLINE, r"\n", remove_value)
 
-        add(WHITESPACE, r"\s +")
+        add(WHITESPACE, r"[ \t]+")
 
         add(
             MULTI_COMMENT,