<jats:p>The γ-butyrolactone autoregulator receptor has been shown to control secondary metabolism and/or morphological differentiation across many <jats:italic>Streptomyces</jats:italic> species. <jats:italic>Streptomyces avermitilis</jats:italic> produces an important anthelmintic agent (avermectin) and two further polyketide antibiotics, filipin and oligomycin. Genomic analysis of <jats:italic>S. avermitilis</jats:italic> revealed that this micro-organism has the clustered putative autoregulator receptor genes distant from the antibiotic biosynthetic gene clusters. Here, we describe the characterization of <jats:italic>avaR3</jats:italic>, one of the clustered receptor genes, which encodes a protein containing an extra stretch of amino acid residues that has not been found in the family of autoregulator receptors. Disruption of <jats:italic>avaR3</jats:italic> resulted in markedly decreased production of avermectins, with delayed expression of avermectin biosynthetic genes, suggesting that AvaR3 positively controls the avermectin biosynthetic genes. Moreover, the disruption caused increased production of filipin without any changes in the transcriptional profile of the filipin biosynthetic genes, suggesting that filipin production is indirectly controlled by AvaR3. The <jats:italic>avaR3</jats:italic> disruptant displayed fragmented growth in liquid culture and conditional morphological defects on solid medium. These findings demonstrated that AvaR3 acts as a global regulator that controls antibiotic production and cell morphology.