This study provides a global atlas of the dominant bacterial phylotypes found in soil, identifying 511 phylotypes that account for nearly half of all soil bacterial communities. These phylotypes are highly abundant and ubiquitous across different ecosystems and bioclimatic regions, with only a small fraction of phylotypes being shared between samples. The study clusters these dominant taxa into ecological groups based on their environmental preferences, such as pH, aridity, and plant productivity. The identified phylotypes are predicted to have specific genomic attributes, particularly in the 'drylands' cluster, which includes genes related to osmotic stress tolerance. The results highlight the importance of these dominant taxa in soil microbial communities and their potential to influence ecosystem processes, such as nutrient cycling and greenhouse gas emissions. The study also demonstrates the feasibility of using environmental information to predict the global distributions of these dominant bacterial phylotypes.This study provides a global atlas of the dominant bacterial phylotypes found in soil, identifying 511 phylotypes that account for nearly half of all soil bacterial communities. These phylotypes are highly abundant and ubiquitous across different ecosystems and bioclimatic regions, with only a small fraction of phylotypes being shared between samples. The study clusters these dominant taxa into ecological groups based on their environmental preferences, such as pH, aridity, and plant productivity. The identified phylotypes are predicted to have specific genomic attributes, particularly in the 'drylands' cluster, which includes genes related to osmotic stress tolerance. The results highlight the importance of these dominant taxa in soil microbial communities and their potential to influence ecosystem processes, such as nutrient cycling and greenhouse gas emissions. The study also demonstrates the feasibility of using environmental information to predict the global distributions of these dominant bacterial phylotypes.