diff --git a/gems/aws-sdk-core/CHANGELOG.md b/gems/aws-sdk-core/CHANGELOG.md
index 9846682310a..6e8875d8a46 100644
--- a/gems/aws-sdk-core/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/gems/aws-sdk-core/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 Unreleased Changes
 ------------------
 
+* Issue - require default plugins when loading aws-sdk-core.
+
 3.202.0 (2024-08-27)
 ------------------
 
diff --git a/gems/aws-sdk-core/lib/aws-sdk-core.rb b/gems/aws-sdk-core/lib/aws-sdk-core.rb
index 4beb4c769b5..e2e6423a08a 100644
--- a/gems/aws-sdk-core/lib/aws-sdk-core.rb
+++ b/gems/aws-sdk-core/lib/aws-sdk-core.rb
@@ -109,7 +109,30 @@
 # defaults
 require_relative 'aws-defaults'
 
-# plugins - loaded through service clients as needed.
+# require default plugins
+require_relative 'seahorse/client/plugins/content_length'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/credentials_configuration'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/logging'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/param_converter'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/param_validator'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/user_agent'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/helpful_socket_errors'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/retry_errors'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/global_configuration'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/regional_endpoint'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/endpoint_discovery'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/endpoint_pattern'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/response_paging'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/stub_responses'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/idempotency_token'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/invocation_id'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/transfer_encoding'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/http_checksum'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/checksum_algorithm'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/request_compression'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/defaults_mode'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/recursion_detection'
+require_relative 'aws-sdk-core/plugins/sign'
 
 module Aws