In order to accurately assess soil quality in tobacco-growing areas of Chongqing, the data on soil physicochemical indicators from 2 513 representative tobacco-growing units (with an average area of approximately 6.7 hm²) in Chongqing were used and analyzed with cluster analysis(CA) and principal component analysis(PCA), a minimum data set(MDS) for soil quality evaluation was established, and an evaluation index system was constructed for tobacco-growing soil quality. The results showed that:1) The evaluation system based on principal component analysis was more suitable for assessing soil quality in Chongqing’s tobacco-growing areas, which reduced the evaluation indicators from the original 16 to 7, including pH, organic matter, available phosphorus, available iron, available zinc, available sulfur, and water-stable macroaggregates. 2) Significant soil acidification was observed in the tobacco-growing areas (35.1% of tobacco-planting fields exhibited acidification); Soil nitrogen were adequate, whereas 62.9% and 75.8% of tobacco-planting fields were excess in available phosphorus and potassium, respectively; Deficiencies and excesses were coexisted in other elements, and 47.2% of tobacco-planting fields was at low level of water-stable macroaggregates. 3) Reasonableness validation found that R² of the model based on MDS-PCA was higher than that of the model based on MDS-CA, MAE and RMSE of the former were smaller than those of the latter, which indicate that MDS-PCA could replace total data set in the evaluation of tobacco-planting soils. Based on the MDS-PCA, the mean value of soil quality index was calculated to be 0.61, indicating soil quality in the tobacco area was at a moderately low level in general, with 45.04% of tobacco-planting fields in urgent need of quality improvement. 4) The radar chart of membership values for soil quality evaluation indicators showed that pH, available phosphorus, available iron, available sulfur, and water-stable macroaggregates exhibited relatively low membership values and were considered limiting factors for tobacco-growing soil.