diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci-health-tests.yaml b/.github/workflows/ci-health-tests.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..9bf77dad9b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.github/workflows/ci-health-tests.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+name: ci-health-tests
+
+on:
+  pull_request:
+    paths:
+      - 'cmd/**'
+      - 'e2e/**'
+      - 'pkg/**'
+      - 'go.*'
+      - '.github/**'
+
+permissions:
+  contents: read
+
+jobs:
+  test:
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    container: docker.io/golang:1.26-alpine
+    steps:
+      - name: Checkout Git repository
+        id: checkout
+        uses: actions/checkout@v6
+
+      - name: Run tests
+        id: test
+        run: |
+          export GITHUB_TOKEN_PATH='/run/github-token'
+
+          echo -n '${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}' >"${GITHUB_TOKEN_PATH}"
+
+          go test ./...
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index f0b44443ab4..37903d67fb8 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -140,6 +140,7 @@ The central artifact is `output/kubevirt/kubevirt/results.json`: `badges-update.
 |----------|---------|---------|
 | `badges-update.yaml` | Scheduled every 3 hours | Runs `stats` for last 7 days, commits updated badges and `results.json` |
 | `ci-failures.yml` | Push to `main` modifying `results.json` | Runs `ci-failures generate report`, commits updated markdown summary |
+| `ci-health-tests.yml` | Pull request that modifies Go code | Runs `go test`, validates changes |
 | `historical-update.yaml` | Weekly (Monday 00:10 UTC) | Runs `batch` fetch+plot for trend metrics, commits updated plots |
 
 ### Prow Postsubmit