diff --git a/vllm/config.py b/vllm/config.py
index 2e8d58411181c..2a165edfd70ee 100644
--- a/vllm/config.py
+++ b/vllm/config.py
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ class ModelConfig:
             available, and "slow" will always use the slow tokenizer.
         trust_remote_code: Trust remote code (e.g., from HuggingFace) when
             downloading the model and tokenizer.
+        keep_special_tokens: Keep special tokens in the generated text.
         download_dir: Directory to download and load the weights, default to the
             default cache directory of huggingface.
         use_np_weights: Save a numpy copy of model weights for faster loading.
@@ -39,6 +40,7 @@ def __init__(
         tokenizer: str,
         tokenizer_mode: str,
         trust_remote_code: bool,
+        keep_special_tokens: bool,
         download_dir: Optional[str],
         use_np_weights: bool,
         use_dummy_weights: bool,
@@ -49,6 +51,7 @@ def __init__(
         self.tokenizer = tokenizer
         self.tokenizer_mode = tokenizer_mode
         self.trust_remote_code = trust_remote_code
+        self.keep_special_tokens = keep_special_tokens
         self.download_dir = download_dir
         self.use_np_weights = use_np_weights
         self.use_dummy_weights = use_dummy_weights
diff --git a/vllm/engine/arg_utils.py b/vllm/engine/arg_utils.py
index 99fe593b4cb01..3c97b0fe90a81 100644
--- a/vllm/engine/arg_utils.py
+++ b/vllm/engine/arg_utils.py
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ class EngineArgs:
     tokenizer: Optional[str] = None
     tokenizer_mode: str = 'auto'
     trust_remote_code: bool = False
+    keep_special_tokens: bool = False
     download_dir: Optional[str] = None
     use_np_weights: bool = False
     use_dummy_weights: bool = False
@@ -130,6 +131,9 @@ def add_cli_args(
         parser.add_argument('--disable-log-stats',
                             action='store_true',
                             help='disable logging statistics')
+        parser.add_argument('--keep-special-tokens',
+                            action='store_true',
+                            help='keep special tokens in the output')
         return parser
 
     @classmethod
@@ -146,9 +150,9 @@ def create_engine_configs(
         # Initialize the configs.
         model_config = ModelConfig(self.model, self.tokenizer,
                                    self.tokenizer_mode, self.trust_remote_code,
-                                   self.download_dir, self.use_np_weights,
-                                   self.use_dummy_weights, self.dtype,
-                                   self.seed)
+                                   self.keep_special_tokens, self.download_dir,
+                                   self.use_np_weights, self.use_dummy_weights,
+                                   self.dtype, self.seed)
         cache_config = CacheConfig(self.block_size,
                                    self.gpu_memory_utilization,
                                    self.swap_space)
diff --git a/vllm/engine/llm_engine.py b/vllm/engine/llm_engine.py
index 4ea443d8451d1..cad1deea1e232 100644
--- a/vllm/engine/llm_engine.py
+++ b/vllm/engine/llm_engine.py
@@ -628,7 +628,7 @@ def _decode_sequence(self, seq: Sequence) -> None:
             self.tokenizer,
             seq.output_tokens,
             seq.get_last_token_id(),
-            skip_special_tokens=True,
+            skip_special_tokens=not self.model_config.keep_special_tokens,
         )
         if new_token is not None:
             seq.output_tokens.append(new_token)