With process optimization and technical innovation, laparoscopic gastrointestinal surgery has evolved dramatically over the last two decades and provided important improvement in the contemporary surgical practice and patients' recovery. With the emergence of many new minimally invasive technologies, including total laparoscopic surgery, single-incision laparoscopic surgery, and natural orifice specimen extraction, patents with gastrointestinal carcinomas may experience less pain and have lower perioperative complications, but the exact efficacy remains to be proven. Large-scale international multi-centre randomized controlled trial data have revealed that laparoscopic colorectal surgery is safe both in terms of short-term perioperative outcomes and long-term oncological efficacy. However, the question whether there is an equivalent oncological outcome compared to the open approach in gastric cancer is still unanswered by now and needs to be proven by future studies.