diff --git a/sklearn/model_selection/_validation.py b/sklearn/model_selection/_validation.py
index 63252e818c3a6..dddc0cce795af 100644
--- a/sklearn/model_selection/_validation.py
+++ b/sklearn/model_selection/_validation.py
@@ -169,7 +169,8 @@ def cross_validate(
 
     scoring : str, callable, list, tuple, or dict, default=None
         Strategy to evaluate the performance of the cross-validated model on
-        the test set.
+        the test set. If `None`, the
+        :ref:`default evaluation criterion <model_evaluation>` of the estimator is used.
 
         If `scoring` represents a single score, one can use: