A novel Gram-positive, rod-shaped actinobacterium, designated strain YIM 90718(T), was isolated from a saline soil in Xinjiang province, north-west China, and subjected to polyphasic taxonomy. The peptidoglycan type was A1gamma and the cell-wall sugars contained galactose. Phospholipids were phosphatidylglycerol and diphosphatidylglycerol. The predominant menaquinone was MK-8(H(2)). The major fatty acids were anteiso-C(15 : 0), anteiso-C(17 : 0) and iso-C(15 : 0). All of these chemotaxonomic data assigned the new isolate YIM 90718(T) consistently to the genus Brevibacterium. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that strain YIM 90718(T) formed a distinct phyletic lineage in the genus Brevibacterium and showed the highest sequence similarity (96.2 %) to Brevibacterium samyangense SST-8(T) and low similarity (<95.5 %) to other species of the genus Brevibacterium. On the based of the polyphasic evidence, a novel species, Brevibacterium album sp. nov., is proposed, with the type strain YIM 90718(T) (=DSM 18261(T) =KCTC 19173(T) =CCTCC AB 206112(T)).