This data set composes quality controlled in situ measurements of eight major pigments based on HPLC collected from various expeditions from 2016 to 2023. There are two subsets: subset 1 is the test dataset (99 matchups) extracted from and takes up 30 % of a global in situ PFT matchup data set, while the other 70 % was used for the retuning of the PFT algorithm for Sentinel 3 OLCI sensors. Subset 1 spans from 2016 to 2021 and is part of the global data set described in Xi et al. (2023): https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.954738. Subset 2 containing 134 matchups is a newly compiled dataset that composites in situ PFT data collected from four recent mostly polar expeditions with the research vessel Polarstern (Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, 2017), that are PS126 (May–June 2021), PS131/1 (June–Aug 2022) and PS136 (May–June 2023) in the north Atlantic to the Arctic Ocean, and PS133 (Oct–Nov 2022) in the Southern Ocean. The in situ PFT data were derived from quality-controlled HPLC pigment concentrations using diagnostic pigment analysis (DPA) with updated pigment-specific weighting coefficients following Xi et al. (2023). This published data set has been used to validate satellite PFT products generated for the EU funded Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS, https://marine.copernicus.eu/), which are derived from multi-sensor ocean color reflectance data and sea surface temperature using an empirical orthogonal function based approach (Xi et al. 2020; 2021).