diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/portage-depclean-fail_json-msg.yml b/changelogs/fragments/portage-depclean-fail_json-msg.yml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..2f368c7877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/fragments/portage-depclean-fail_json-msg.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+bugfixes:
+  - "portage - fix ``depclean: true`` crashing with ``AnsibleModule.fail_json() missing 1 required positional argument: 'msg'`` instead of reporting the actual emerge failure (https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.general/pull/12168)."
diff --git a/plugins/modules/portage.py b/plugins/modules/portage.py
index 29cbab4099..12f25b2f90 100644
--- a/plugins/modules/portage.py
+++ b/plugins/modules/portage.py
@@ -508,7 +508,13 @@ def cleanup_packages(module, packages):
 
     cmd, (rc, out, err) = run_emerge(module, packages, *args)
     if rc != 0:
-        module.fail_json(cmd=cmd, rc=rc, stdout=out, stderr=err)
+        module.fail_json(
+            cmd=cmd,
+            rc=rc,
+            stdout=out,
+            stderr=err,
+            msg="Packages not cleaned up.",
+        )
 
     removed = 0
     for line in out.splitlines():