The first S3 guidelines on renal cell cancer cover the practical aspects of imaging, diagnostics and therapy as well as the clinical relevance of pathology reporting. This review summarizes the changes in renal tumor classification and the new recommendations for reporting renal cell tumors. The S3 guidelines recommend the 2016 World Health Organization (WHO) classification of renal cell tumors. Novel renal cell tumor entities and provisional or emerging renal cell tumor entities of the 2016 WHO classification of renal tumors are discussed. The S3 guidelines for renal cell cancer also recommend the use of the WHO/International Society of Urologic Pathology (ISUP) grading system for clear cell and for papillary renal cell carcinomas, which replaces the previously used Fuhrman grading system.