diff --git a/opentelemetry-sdk/src/opentelemetry/sdk/trace/__init__.py b/opentelemetry-sdk/src/opentelemetry/sdk/trace/__init__.py
index 0e7e1f6db3..94436cae2b 100644
--- a/opentelemetry-sdk/src/opentelemetry/sdk/trace/__init__.py
+++ b/opentelemetry-sdk/src/opentelemetry/sdk/trace/__init__.py
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 import concurrent.futures
 import json
 import logging
+import os
 import threading
 import traceback
 import typing
@@ -238,8 +239,16 @@ def __init__(self, num_threads: int = 2):
         # iterating through it on "on_start" and "on_end".
         self._span_processors = ()  # type: Tuple[SpanProcessor, ...]
         self._lock = threading.Lock()
-        self._executor = concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor(
-            max_workers=num_threads
+        self._num_threads = num_threads
+        self._executor = self._build_executor()
+        if hasattr(os, "register_at_fork"):
+            # Only the main thread is kept in forked processed, the executor
+            # needs to be re-instantiated to get a fresh pool of threads:
+            os.register_at_fork(after_in_child=self._build_executor)
+
+    def _build_executor(self) -> concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor:
+        return concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor(
+            max_workers=self._num_threads
         )
 
     def add_span_processor(self, span_processor: SpanProcessor) -> None: