<p>The seed bank is a crucial component of weed populations and a key factor in determining future weed infestations in arable fields. Sustainable agricultural practices have been widely promoted as environmentally friendly cultivation methods and have significant impacts on the seed bank. But the effects of sustainable agricultural practices on the seed bank remain inconclusive, posing challenges to the development of effective and precise weed management strategies. To address this uncertainty, we collected 1,604 experimental records from 146 publications and carried out a meta-analysis to quantitatively assess the effects of five sustainable agricultural practices on weed seed banks. Results showed that the average impacts of cover cropping, intercropping, reduced tillage, residue return and rotation on the seed bank density were -49%, -44%, 33%, -22%, and -18%, respectively. And the average impacts of these five practices on the seed bank species richness were -5%, -12%, 14%, 3%, and -11%, respectively. Cover cropping and intercropping reduced the density proportion of dominant weed seeds compared to the control group. The impact of sustainable agricultural practices on the seed bank varied across agricultural systems (e.g., paddy vs non-paddy fields) and management practices (e.g., residue return rates). Further analysis suggested that combining reduced tillage with other practices could mitigate its associated increase in seed bank density, with potential additive effects when multiple practices are simultaneously applied. This is the first comprehensive analysis of the impacts of common sustainable agricultural practices on weed seed density and species richness of the weed seed bank, and provides a reference for sustainable weed management strategies at the farm scale from the perspective of the seed bank.</p>