diff --git a/packages/react-native/ReactAndroid/hermes-engine/build.gradle b/packages/react-native/ReactAndroid/hermes-engine/build.gradle
index f2a4f8d675df17..8aaf6cdb0cc016 100644
--- a/packages/react-native/ReactAndroid/hermes-engine/build.gradle
+++ b/packages/react-native/ReactAndroid/hermes-engine/build.gradle
@@ -191,6 +191,8 @@ android {
             externalNativeBuild {
                 cmake {
                     arguments "-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=MinSizeRel"
+                    // For release builds, we don't want to enable the Hermes Debugger.
+                    arguments "-DHERMES_ENABLE_DEBUGGER=False"
                 }
             }
         }