diff --git c/mm/internal.h i/mm/internal.h
--- c/mm/internal.h
+++ i/mm/internal.h
@@ -1778,12 +1778,24 @@ void __meminit __init_page_from_nid(unsigned long pfn, int nid);
  * @order is the order the caller asked for, not the order reclaim was
  * promoted to. defrag_mode raises the reclaim order to pageblock_order,
  * which says nothing about what the caller can tolerate.
+ *
+ * A transparent huge page allocation sets neither flag, yet a failed
+ * collapse or fault falls back to small pages. Recognise it by its mask.
+ * In this tree the complete GFP_TRANSHUGE_LIGHT set is carried by the
+ * huge page fault path, khugepaged and the large folio migration
+ * targets. The huge zero folio clears __GFP_MOVABLE and so keeps normal
+ * shrinker behaviour. The three other sites that combine __GFP_COMP
+ * with __GFP_NOMEMALLOC do not carry the movable, highmem and
+ * filesystem bits, so they do not match.
  */
 static inline bool gfp_opportunistic_compaction(gfp_t gfp_flags, int order)
 {
 	if (!order || (gfp_flags & __GFP_NOFAIL))
 		return false;
 
+	if ((gfp_flags & GFP_TRANSHUGE_LIGHT) == GFP_TRANSHUGE_LIGHT)
+		return true;
+
 	return !!(gfp_flags & (__GFP_NORETRY | __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL));
 }