The ESMO (European Society For Medical Oncology) congress is the most influential annual meeting for oncology professionals in Europe.The 2017 ESMO congress was held in Madrid, Spain from 8 th to 12 th September 2017 and brought cancer researchers and clinicians together to enable collaboration and exchange their ideas from the laboratory to the bedside. Here, progress at the cutting edge frontier of colorectal cancer including clinical key points present during the conference will be summarized and some brief comments was given, for example, adjuvant chemotherapy duration, advantages and disadvantages in chemotherapy with S-1, perioperative targeted drug selection, cross-line therapy for targeted therapy, resistance to anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) treatment and relationship between location and adjuvant therapy.