The association of estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) with cardiovascular disease risk among patients with type 2 diabetes is unclear. Here we prospectively investigated the race-specific association of estimated GFR with the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke among 11,940 Caucasian and 16,451 African-American patients. During mean follow-up of 6.1-6.8 years, 6647 coronary heart disease and 2750 stroke incident cases were identified. Age- and sex-adjusted hazard ratios of coronary heart disease associated with baseline estimated GFR (90 or more, 75-89, 60-74, 30-59, and 15-29 ml/min per 1.73 m2) were 1.00, 1.04, 1.13, 1.37, and 2.07 (significant trend) for African Americans, and 1.00, 1.09, 1.10, 1.31, and 2.18 (significant trend) for Caucasians, respectively. A significantly increased stroke risk was observed among both African-American and Caucasian participants with an estimated GFR under 60 ml/min per 1.73 m2. When using the updated mean values of estimated GFR, these significant associations became stronger. Participants with mildly decreased estimated GFR (60-89 ml/min per 1.73 m2) during follow-up were also at a significantly higher risk of coronary heart disease and stroke. Thus, even mildly reduced estimated GFR at baseline (under 75 ml/min per 1.73 m2) and during follow-up (under 90 ml/min per 1.73 m2) increased the risk of incident coronary heart disease and stroke among both African-American and Caucasian type 2 diabetes patients.