diff --git a/.changeset/twenty-laws-tie.md b/.changeset/twenty-laws-tie.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..a1f9e88e57
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.changeset/twenty-laws-tie.md
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+---
+'@backstage/plugin-catalog-backend': patch
+---
+
+Updated condition in resolveCodeOwner to fix a bug where normalizeCodeOwner could potentially be called with an invalid arg causing an error in CodeOwnersProcessor.
diff --git a/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.ts b/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.ts
index 675f6542aa..b0c44a8797 100644
--- a/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.ts
+++ b/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.ts
@@ -30,7 +30,9 @@ export function resolveCodeOwner(
   const { filepath } = parseGitUrl(catalogInfoFileUrl);
   const match = codeowners.matchFile(filepath, codeOwnerEntries);
 
-  return match ? normalizeCodeOwner(match.owners[0]) : undefined;
+  return match?.owners?.length
+    ? normalizeCodeOwner(match.owners[0])
+    : undefined;
 }
 
 export function normalizeCodeOwner(owner: string) {