diff --git a/test/functional/test_runner.py b/test/functional/test_runner.py
index 462547f44..96786e41b 100755
--- a/test/functional/test_runner.py
+++ b/test/functional/test_runner.py
@@ -234,6 +234,7 @@ def main():
     parser.add_argument('--quiet', '-q', action='store_true', help='only print dots, results summary and failure logs')
     parser.add_argument('--tmpdirprefix', '-t', default=tempfile.gettempdir(), help="Root directory for datadirs")
     parser.add_argument('--failfast', action='store_true', help='stop execution after the first test failure')
+    parser.add_argument('--filter', help='filter scripts to run by regular expression')
     args, unknown_args = parser.parse_known_args()
 
     # args to be passed on always start with two dashes; tests are the remaining unknown args
@@ -294,6 +295,9 @@ def main():
             if not exclude_list:
                 print("{}WARNING!{} Test '{}' not found in current test list.".format(BOLD[1], BOLD[0], exclude_test))
 
+    if args.filter:
+        test_list = list(filter(re.compile(args.filter).search, test_list))
+
     if not test_list:
         print("No valid test scripts specified. Check that your test is in one "
               "of the test lists in test_runner.py, or run test_runner.py with no arguments to run all tests")