The prognostic role of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) in colorectal cancer remains unclear. We employed a meta-analysis to explore the prognostic value of PD-L1 and to ascertain the relationship between PD-L1 expression and clinicopathological characteristics in CRC patients. We systematically searched PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane Library until October 2018. Eligible studies about colorectal cancer that pay attention to PD-L1 expression and studies reporting survival information were included. In order to evaluate the prognostic role of PD-L1 for overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS)/disease-free survival (DFS), Hazard ratio (HR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) was used. Odds ratio (OR) with 95% CI was selected to appraise the correlation between PD-L1 with clinicopathological characteristics of colorectal cancer patients. Begg's funnel plot was used to assess publication bias. Twelve studies involving 4344 patients published from 2013 to 2018 were included in this meta-analysis. Pooled results revealed that PD-L1 overexpression was relevant to shorter OS (HR 1.47, 95% CI =1.01-2.15, =0.04) and shorter RFS/DFS (HR 1.47, 95% CI =1.01-2.15, =0.04). Moreover, Patients with high expression of PD-L1 associated with inferior tumor stage (OR=0.57, 95% CI: 0.45, 0.74, <0.0001) and Vascular invasion-negativity (OR=0.75, 95% CI: 0.6, 0.94, =0.01). But the expression of PD-L1 is not related to age, sex, tumor location, tumor differentiation, pT stage, pN stage, MSI/MMR status. This meta-analysis revealed that PD-L1 can serve as a significant biomarker for negative prognosis and the adverse clinicopathological features of colorectal cancer and could facilitate the better management of individual patients.