diff --git a/HISTORY.md b/HISTORY.md
index 9b05f8a49f7f309efd70e8950c1b0c49955d5661..cf566b49dc567476c42e3f274fc1d1d56a152094 100644
--- a/HISTORY.md
+++ b/HISTORY.md
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
 
 ### New Features
 * Avoid unnecessarily flushing in `CompactRange()` when the range specified by the user does not overlap unflushed memtables.
+* If `ColumnFamilyOptions::max_subcompactions` is set greater than one, we now parallelize large manual level-based compactions.
 * Add "rocksdb.live-sst-files-size" DB property to return total bytes of all SST files belong to the latest LSM tree.
 
 ### Bug Fixes
diff --git a/db/compaction.cc b/db/compaction.cc
index c2785adeeb6f7000327d676c18da014f840b4119..9db41139b51ac36a3168289c04657b9fec756ad9 100644
--- a/db/compaction.cc
+++ b/db/compaction.cc
@@ -446,7 +446,8 @@ bool Compaction::ShouldFormSubcompactions() const {
     return false;
   }
   if (cfd_->ioptions()->compaction_style == kCompactionStyleLevel) {
-    return start_level_ == 0 && output_level_ > 0 && !IsOutputLevelEmpty();
+    return (start_level_ == 0 || is_manual_compaction_) && output_level_ > 0 &&
+           !IsOutputLevelEmpty();
   } else if (cfd_->ioptions()->compaction_style == kCompactionStyleUniversal) {
     return number_levels_ > 1 && output_level_ > 0;
   } else {