The unique climatic conditions and geographical location resulted in challenging ecological restoration and limited self-recovery capacity in alpine mining areas. Artificial grassland establishment emerged as a critical ecological restoration measure. Investigating soil physicochemical properties and bacterial community characteristics during artificial grassland restoration was essential for evaluating restoration efficacy and developing management strategies. Using a space-for-time substitution approach, this study selected artificial grasslands with different restoration duration on dump slopes in the Delny mining area (Maqin County, Qinghai Province) as research subjects, with natural grassland as control. The investigation analyzed temporal changes in soil physicochemical properties and bacterial community characteristics, comparing artificial versus natural grasslands. Key findings revealed that: After 2-year restoration, soil nutrient content and bacterial α-diversity indices increased significantly. However, these parameters declined with prolonged restoration, including soil nutrients, soil water content, pH, and α-diversity indices. There were significant differences in soil organic matter, total nitrogen, available nitrogen, pH and soil bulk density between artificial grassland with different restoration duration and natural alpine meadow (P<0.05). The β diversity of bacterial community in different restoration duration was significantly different (P<0.05). With increasing restoration duration, the structural dissimilarity between artificial and natural grassland bacterial communities progressively decreased. No significant difference occurred in dominant bacterial phyla across recovery duration. Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria comprised over 50% of total bacterial OTUs, while the relative abundance of Firmicutes declined with increasing recovery duration. Correlation analysis revealed temporally divergent responses of bacterial diversity to soil factors: α-diversity was significantly influenced by soil organic matter, total nitrogen, soil water content, and pH, with species richness primarily nitrogen-limited. Furthermore, phylum-level bacterial abundances showed significant correlations with specific soil physicochemical properties, confirming strong interactive effects between bacterial community structure and soil characteristics.