diff --git a/CHANGELOG.txt b/CHANGELOG.txt
index 9631c69820..ecf19022a5 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.txt
+++ b/CHANGELOG.txt
@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@ Changelog
  * Fix: Refactor all breakpoint definitions, removing style overlaps (Janneke Janssen)
  * Fix: Updated draftjs_exporter to 2.1.5 to fix bug in handling adjacent entities (Thibaud Colas)
  * Fix: Page titles consisting only of stopwords now generate a non-empty default slug (Andy Chosak, Janneke Janssen)
+ * Fix: Sitemap generator now allows passing a sitemap instance in the URL configuration (Mitchel Cabuloy, Dan Braghis)
 
 
 2.3 LTS (23.10.2018)
diff --git a/docs/releases/2.4.rst b/docs/releases/2.4.rst
index aaeb4082ed..56b312a512 100644
--- a/docs/releases/2.4.rst
+++ b/docs/releases/2.4.rst
@@ -55,6 +55,7 @@ Bug fixes
  * Refactor all breakpoint definitions, removing style overlaps (Janneke Janssen)
  * Updated draftjs_exporter to 2.1.5 to fix bug in handling adjacent entities (Thibaud Colas)
  * Page titles consisting only of stopwords now generate a non-empty default slug (Andy Chosak, Janneke Janssen)
+ * Sitemap generator now allows passing a sitemap instance in the URL configuration (Mitchel Cabuloy, Dan Braghis)
 
 
 Upgrade considerations
diff --git a/wagtail/contrib/sitemaps/views.py b/wagtail/contrib/sitemaps/views.py
index 8267b2a9ba..0e0f7f81d1 100644
--- a/wagtail/contrib/sitemaps/views.py
+++ b/wagtail/contrib/sitemaps/views.py
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+import inspect
 from django.contrib.sitemaps import views as sitemap_views
 
 from .sitemap_generator import Sitemap
@@ -20,7 +21,7 @@ def prepare_sitemaps(request, sitemaps):
     """Intialize the wagtail Sitemap by passing the request.site value. """
     initialised_sitemaps = {}
     for name, sitemap_cls in sitemaps.items():
-        if issubclass(sitemap_cls, Sitemap):
+        if inspect.isclass(sitemap_cls) and issubclass(sitemap_cls, Sitemap):
             initialised_sitemaps[name] = sitemap_cls(request)
         else:
             initialised_sitemaps[name] = sitemap_cls
diff --git a/wagtail/tests/testapp/models.py b/wagtail/tests/testapp/models.py
index b3200d4437..6783d0191e 100644
--- a/wagtail/tests/testapp/models.py
+++ b/wagtail/tests/testapp/models.py
@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@ from wagtail.contrib.forms.forms import FormBuilder
 from wagtail.contrib.forms.models import (
     FORM_FIELD_CHOICES, AbstractEmailForm, AbstractFormField, AbstractFormSubmission)
 from wagtail.contrib.settings.models import BaseSetting, register_setting
+from wagtail.contrib.sitemaps import Sitemap
 from wagtail.contrib.table_block.blocks import TableBlock
 from wagtail.core.blocks import CharBlock, RichTextBlock, StructBlock
 from wagtail.core.fields import RichTextField, StreamField
@@ -364,6 +365,11 @@ class SingleEventPage(EventPage):
 SingleEventPage.content_panels = [FieldPanel('excerpt')] + EventPage.content_panels
 
 
+# "custom" sitemap object
+class EventSitemap(Sitemap):
+    pass
+
+
 # Event index (has a separate AJAX template, and a custom template context)
 class EventIndex(Page):
     intro = RichTextField(blank=True)
diff --git a/wagtail/tests/urls.py b/wagtail/tests/urls.py
index 1082a1544b..878f47e679 100644
--- a/wagtail/tests/urls.py
+++ b/wagtail/tests/urls.py
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ from wagtail.images import urls as wagtailimages_urls
 from wagtail.images.api.v2.endpoints import ImagesAPIEndpoint
 from wagtail.images.tests import urls as wagtailimages_test_urls
 from wagtail.tests.testapp import urls as testapp_urls
+from wagtail.tests.testapp.models import EventSitemap
 
 api_router = WagtailAPIRouter('wagtailapi_v2')
 api_router.register_endpoint('pages', PagesAPIEndpoint)
@@ -29,7 +30,7 @@ urlpatterns = [
     url(r'^sitemap\.xml$', sitemaps_views.sitemap),
 
     url(r'^sitemap-index\.xml$', sitemaps_views.index, {
-        'sitemaps': {'pages': Sitemap},
+        'sitemaps': {'pages': Sitemap, 'events': EventSitemap(request=None)},
         'sitemap_url_name': 'sitemap',
     }),
     url(r'^sitemap-(?P<section>.+)\.xml$', sitemaps_views.sitemap, name='sitemap'),