The phylogenetic position and physiological characters of six hitherto-unknown lactic acid bacterial isolates, which form part of the surface microbiota of German red smear soft cheese, are reported. The coccoid cells are aerotolerant, Gram-positive, catalase-negative and non-motile. The cell-wall peptidoglycan contains alanine, glutamic acid, lysine and aspartic acid and is of the A4alpha type (l-Lys-d-Asp). The sequences of the 16S rRNA, groEL and rpoB genes of the six isolates are identical and reveal that these isolates represent an independent lineage within the radiation of the family Enterococcaceae in the phylum Firmicutes. Their closest phylogenetic neighbour is the lactic acid bacterium Atopobacter phocae M1590/94/2(T), with which they share 94.9 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity; representatives of other genera such as Granulicatella, Carnobacterium and Trichococcus are more distantly related. DNA-DNA hybridization studies reveal that the six isolates are members of a single species, and this is confirmed by similarities in biochemical characteristics. The six isolates were assigned four different groups by Fourier-transform infrared and randomly amplified polymorphic DNA typing. Therefore, it is formally proposed that these isolates should be classified in a single novel species of a novel genus and be named Bavariicoccus seileri gen. nov., sp. nov. The type strain of Bavariicoccus seileri is WCC 4188(T) (=DSM 19936(T) =CCUG 55508(T)).