diff --git a/hack/fetch-old-crd.sh b/hack/fetch-old-crd.sh
new file mode 100755
index 000000000..b1f38c6a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/hack/fetch-old-crd.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+
+# Copyright 2022 The cert-manager Authors.
+#
+# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+# You may obtain a copy of the License at
+#
+#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+#
+# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+# limitations under the License.
+
+set -eu -o pipefail
+
+# This script fetches old CRDs from GitHub releases but gracefully exits without an error
+# if it encounters a 404. This handles the case where a git tag exists but no release
+# exists, which would otherwise cause fetching the CRDs to fail.
+
+function print_help() {
+	echo "usage: $0 <url-to-fetch> <file-to-write>" > /dev/stderr
+}
+
+if [[ -z "${1:-}" ]]; then
+	print_help
+	exit 1
+fi
+
+if [[ -z "${2:-}" ]]; then
+	print_help
+	exit 1
+fi
+
+url=$1
+destfile=$2
+
+# make curl write to a temp file, since we don't want to write to destfile if
+# we get a 404 from GitHub
+outfile=$(mktemp)
+
+trap 'rm -f -- "$outfile"' EXIT
+
+STATUSCODE=$(curl --retry 3 --compressed --silent --location --output $outfile --write-out "%{http_code}" $url)
+
+if test $STATUSCODE -eq 404; then
+	# If a tag exists without a release, then we'll get a 404 here. This could happen during a release, for example.
+	# In this case, we don't error and don't write anything to destfile
+	exit 0
+elif test $STATUSCODE -ne 200; then
+	echo "Got status code $STATUSCODE for '$url' - possibly broken or in-progress release / GitHub down / rate limit" > /dev/stderr
+	exit 1
+fi
+
+cp $outfile $destfile
diff --git a/make/test.mk b/make/test.mk
index f9bae63e5..9333cc081 100644
--- a/make/test.mk
+++ b/make/test.mk
@@ -85,9 +85,9 @@ test/integration/versionchecker/testdata/test_manifests.tar: bin/scratch/oldcrds
 bin/scratch/oldcrds.tar: bin/scratch/git/upstream-tags.txt | bin/scratch/oldcrds
 	@# First, download the CRDs for all releases listed in upstream-tags.txt
 	<bin/scratch/git/upstream-tags.txt xargs -I% -P5 \
-		curl --compressed -sSfL \
-		-o bin/scratch/oldcrds/%.yaml \
-		"https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/%/cert-manager.yaml"
+		./hack/fetch-old-crd.sh \
+		"https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/%/cert-manager.yaml" \
+		bin/scratch/oldcrds/%.yaml
 	@# Next, tar up the old CRDs together
 	tar cf $@ -C bin/scratch/oldcrds .