Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNA) are emerging as key molecules in human cancer. Prostate cancer-associated ncRNA transcripts 1 (PCAT-1), a lncRNA, has been recently revealed involving in human prostate cancer progression. However, whether PCAT-1 could serve as novel biomarker to predict prognosis in colorectal cancer (CRC) or not is unknown. We therefore carried out the present study to explore the correlation between PCAT-1 expression and the progression of CRC. In this study, the expression of PCAT-1 in 108 cases of CRC tissues and matched 81 adjacent normal tissues were determined by quantitative real-time PCR. Furthermore, the copy number variation of PCAT-1 was also measured in 17 tumor tissues and matched normal tissues. Our results showed that PCAT-1 expression in CRC tissues was significantly upregulated compared with the matched normal tissues (p < 0.001) and the overexpression of PCAT-1(upregulated by more than 50 %) was found in 64 % (62/81) of CRC. Moreover, PCAT-1 gene copy number variation explains only a few percent of observed overexpression. In addition, there was a significant association between PCAT-1 expression and distant metastasis (p = 0.04), but not other clinical characteristics. More important, CRC patients with PCAT-1 higher expression have shown significantly poorer overall survival than those with lower PCAT-1 expression (p < 0.001). Also, multivariable Cox regression analysis identified PCAT-1 overexpression as an independent prognostic factor for CRC (p = 0.007, HR = 3.12 95 %CI = 1.355-7.185). In conclusion, our results suggest that high expression of PCAT-1 is involved in CRC progression and could be a novel biomarker of poor prognosis in patient with colorectal cancer.