This data set composes a large amount of quality controlled in situ measurements of major pigments based on HPLC collected from various expeditions across the Atlantic Ocean spanning from 71°S to 84°N, including 11 expeditions with RV Polarstern from the North Atlantic to the Arctic Fram Strait: PS74, PSS76, PS78, PS80, PS85, PS93.2 (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.894872), PS99.1 (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.905502), PS99.2 ( https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.894874), PS106 (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.899284), PS107 (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.894860), PS121 (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.941011), four expeditions (two with RV Polarstern and two Atlantic Meridional Transect expeditions with RRS James Clark Ross and RRS Discovery) in the trans-Atlantic Ocean: PS113 ( https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.911061), PS120, AMT28 and AMT29, and one expedition with RV Polarstern in the Southern Ocean: PS103 (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.898941). Chlorophyll a concentration (Chl-a) of six phytoplankton functions groups (PFTs) derived from these pigments have been also included. This published data set has contributed to validate satellite PFT products available on the EU funded Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS, https://marine.copernicus.eu/), which are derived from multi-sensor ocean colour reflectance data and sea surface temperature using an empirical orthogonal function based approach (Xi et al. 2020; 2021).Description on in situ PFT Chl-a determination from pigment data: PFT Chl-a in this data set were derived using an updated diagnostic pigment analysis (DPA) method (Soppa et al., 2014; Losa et al., 2017) with retuned coefficients by Alvarado et al (2021), that was originally developed by Vidussi et al. (2001), adapted in Uitz et al. (2006) and further refined by Hirata et al. (2011) and Brewin et al. (2015). The values of retuned DPA weighting coefficients for PFT Chl-a determination are: 1.56 for fucoxanthin, 1.53 for peridinin, 0.89 for 19'-hexanoyloxyfucoxanthin, 0.44 for 19'-butanoyloxyfucoxanthin, 1.94 for alloxanthin, 2.63 for total chlorophyll b, and 0.99 for zeaxanthin. The coefficient retuning was based on an updated global HPLC pigment data base for the open ocean (water depth >200 m), which was compiled based on the previously published data sets spanning from 1988 to 2012 described in Losa et al. (2017), with updates in Xi et al. (2021) and Álvarez et al. (2022), by adding other newly available HPLC pigment data collected between 2012 and 2018 mainly from SeaBASS (https://seabass.gsfc.nasa.gov/), PANGAEA, British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC, https://www.bodc.ac.uk/), and Australian Open Access to Ocean Data (AODN, https://portal.aodn.org.au/) (as of February 2020, see Table 1 attached in the 'Additional metadata' for more details on the data sources).