Earth’s climate crisis is jeopardizing vital ecosystem services and disrupting food security. It has placed the planet at a critical juncture. Microbial communities, or microbiomes, essential for climate feedback and maintaining soil and plant health, face unprecedented threats. As these microbiomes struggle, our ability to create resilient systems hangs in the balance. In this context, the ERC-funded MicroRescue project aims to recover and reactivate dormant microorganisms to counteract the adverse impacts of climate change on ecosystems and ensure a sustainable future. By understanding and predicting dormant microorganisms’ capacity to rescue microbiomes, the project will develop strategies for plant resilience. Through multi-factor experiments, MicroRescue pioneers microbiological amendments and host-microbiome engineering.