A Gram-stain-negative, yellow, non-spore-forming, rod-shaped bacterium, designated N7(T), was isolated from a soil sample collected from a rice field in Jiangsu, China, and was characterized using a polyphasic taxonomic approach. Strain N7(T) grew optimally at 25-30 °C, pH 6.0-8.0, and in the presence of 1 % NaCl (w/v). 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that strain N7(T) was a member of the genus Sphingobacterium and was closely related to Sphingobacterium multivorum IAM14316(T) (97.49 %) and Sphingobacterium canadense CR11(T) (97.11 %), sharing less than 97 % sequence similarities with other species of the genus Sphingobacterium. The predominant respiratory quinone of strain N7(T) was MK-7 and major fatty acids were summed features 3 (C16 : 1ω6c and/or C16 : 1ω7c), iso-C15 : 0, C16 : 0 and iso-C17 : 0 3-OH. The G+C content of the DNA was 40.9±0.5 mol%. The levels of DNA-DNA relatedness between strain N7(T) and the most closely related species S. multivorum IAM 14316(T) and S. canadense CR11(T) were 21 % and 15 %, respectively. Based on these results, strain N7(T) is proposed to represent a separate species within the genus Sphingobacterium. The name Sphingobacterium changzhouense sp. nov. is suggested and the type strain is N7(T) ( = CCTCC AB 2012100(T) = KACC 16854(T)).