diff --git a/admin/admin.el b/admin/admin.el
index 8fc970ed430..12891bc8c48 100644
--- a/admin/admin.el
+++ b/admin/admin.el
@@ -122,6 +122,13 @@ Root must be the root of an Emacs source tree."
 		       (rx (and "AC_INIT" (1+ (not (in ?,)))
                                 ?, (0+ space) ?\[
                                 (submatch (1+ (in "0-9."))))))
+  (set-version-in-file root "java/incrementing-version-code"
+                       (apply #'format "%02d%02d%02d000"
+                              (mapcar #'string-to-number
+                                      (split-string version "\\.")))
+                       (rx (and line-start
+                                (submatch (1+ (in digit)))
+                                line-end)))
   (set-version-in-file root "nt/README.W32" version
 		       (rx (and "version" (1+ space)
 				(submatch (1+ (in "0-9."))))))
diff --git a/java/incrementing-version-code b/java/incrementing-version-code
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..fed5b627275
--- /dev/null
+++ b/java/incrementing-version-code
@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+; This file contains an Android version code
+; (https://developer.android.com/studio/publish/versioning#versioningsettings)
+; corresponding to the current Emacs version.
+;
+; The version code in AndroidManifest.xml.in is hard-coded to a fixed
+; value, to make package downgrades possible.  Where an incrementing
+; version code is required (for example, for automated F-Droid package
+; builds (https://f-droid.org/packages/org.gnu.emacs/)), the version
+; code in this file should be referred to and patched in to
+; AndroidManifest.xml.
+
+300093000