diff --git a/src/core/ext/xds/xds_client.cc b/src/core/ext/xds/xds_client.cc
index 83d6f9b84a2..7740712eda1 100644
--- a/src/core/ext/xds/xds_client.cc
+++ b/src/core/ext/xds/xds_client.cc
@@ -1022,6 +1022,13 @@ void XdsClient::ChannelState::AdsCallState::AcceptCdsUpdate(
     const std::string& cluster_name = p.first;
     if (cds_update_map.find(cluster_name) == cds_update_map.end()) {
       ClusterState& cluster_state = xds_client()->cluster_map_[cluster_name];
+      // If the resource was newly requested but has not yet been received,
+      // we don't want to generate an error for the watchers, because this CDS
+      // response may be in reaction to an earlier request that did not yet
+      // request the new resource, so its absence from the response does not
+      // necessarily indicate that the resource does not exist.
+      // For that case, we rely on the request timeout instead.
+      if (!cluster_state.update.has_value()) continue;
       cluster_state.update.reset();
       for (const auto& p : cluster_state.watchers) {
         p.first->OnResourceDoesNotExist();
diff --git a/test/cpp/end2end/xds_end2end_test.cc b/test/cpp/end2end/xds_end2end_test.cc
index 0fb9bff7bc5..00a24c61f87 100644
--- a/test/cpp/end2end/xds_end2end_test.cc
+++ b/test/cpp/end2end/xds_end2end_test.cc
@@ -1545,6 +1545,7 @@ class XdsEnd2endTest : public ::testing::TestWithParam<TestType> {
             "Performed %d warm up requests against the backends. "
             "%d succeeded, %d failed, %d dropped.",
             num_total, num_ok, num_failure, num_drops);
+    EXPECT_EQ(num_failure, 0);
     return std::make_tuple(num_ok, num_failure, num_drops);
   }