Objective To investigate the expression and clinical significance of chemokine receptor CXCR7 in epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC) tissues. Methods Immunohistochemical technique was used to detect the protein expression of CXCR7 in 57 EOC tissues, 15 benign ovarian tumor tissues and 15 normal ovarian germinal epithelium tissues. The chi-square test, Kaplan-Meier method and multivariate Cox regression analysis were used to evaluate the relationship between the expression of CXCR7 and clinicopathological features and its prognosis. Results The positive expression rates of CXCR7 in EOC tissue, benign ovarian tumor tissue and normal ovarian germinal epithelium tissue were 68.42% (39/57), 26.67% (4/15) and 13.33% (2/15), respectively (χ²=19.97, P=0.000 1). The positive expression of CXCR7 was significantly correlated with the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stages, histological grade, lymph node metastasis and peritoneal metastasis (P<0.05), but not with age, preoperative CA125 level, histological type of EOC, residual tumor diameter, ascites content, or tumor size (P>0.05). Univariate analysis and multivariate analysis results showed that the positive expression of CXCR7, FIGO stage, histological grade, lymph node metastasis and peritoneal metastasis were statistically correlated with the overall survival and disease-free survival of EOC patients. Kaplan-Meier curve revealed that both overall survival and disease-free survival in EOC patients with positive expression of CXCR7 were significantly lower than those in EOC patients with negative CXCR7 (P<0.05). Conclusion The high expression of CXCR7 is closely related to the recurrence and metastasis in EOC patients, which indicates that CXCR7 might be a potential predictor and an important therapeutic indicator of EOC.