diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
index fd543b145..c1dec8150 100644
--- a/AUTHORS
+++ b/AUTHORS
@@ -59,6 +59,7 @@ Jaap Broekhuizen
 Jan Balster
 Janne Vanhala
 Jason R. Coombs
+Javier Domingo Cansino
 John Towler
 Joshua Bronson
 Jurko Gospodnetić
diff --git a/CHANGELOG.rst b/CHANGELOG.rst
index e67cffc70..6d754d929 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.rst
+++ b/CHANGELOG.rst
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
   level an error will be raised during collection.
   Thanks `@omarkohl`_ for the complete PR (`#1519`_).
 
-*
+* Fix (`1516`_): ConftestImportFailure now shows the traceback
 
 **Incompatible changes**
 
diff --git a/_pytest/config.py b/_pytest/config.py
index 463d8f04f..577425d6a 100644
--- a/_pytest/config.py
+++ b/_pytest/config.py
@@ -25,6 +25,12 @@ class ConftestImportFailure(Exception):
         self.path = path
         self.excinfo = excinfo
 
+    def __str__(self):
+        etype, evalue, etb = self.excinfo
+        formatted = traceback.format_tb(etb)
+        # The level of the tracebacks we want to print is hand crafted :(
+        return repr(evalue) + '\n' + ''.join(formatted[2:])
+
 
 def main(args=None, plugins=None):
     """ return exit code, after performing an in-process test run.