Tumor recurrence is a hallmark of superficial bladder cancer. Currently, a molecular marker for bladder cancer recurrence is lacking. E-cadherin plays an important role in epithelial development and in the establishment and maintenance of cell-cell adhesion and tissue architecture. The purpose of this study is to investigate the association of an E-cadherin promoter polymorphism (CDH1c-160a) with the risk of bladder cancer recurrence. This study included 302 patients with superficial bladder cancer. Genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood lymphocytes and genotyping was performed using Taqman assay. Clinical data were collected by medical chart review. Cox proportional hazard model was used to estimate the hazard ratios (HRs) associated with genotypes while adjusting for age, gender, smoking status, tumor stage and grade where appropriate. During a median follow-up of 27.65 months, 151 patients experienced disease recurrence. Subsequent analyses were restricted to Caucasians only due to the small sample size of other ethnic groups (13 in recurrence group and 15 in non-recurrence group). Among the 274 Caucasian patients, 138 developed recurrence during the same length of follow-up time. In Caucasian patients, having at least one variant A allele conferred a 32% reduction in recurrence risk (adjusted HR: 0.68; 95% CI: 0.48-0.96). The median recurrence-free survival for patients carrying at least one variant A allele was significantly longer than that for patients with a homozygous CC genotype (40.4 vs 12.5 months, p=0.04). Our findings suggest that the E-cadherin promoter polymorphism may be a valuable molecular marker for bladder cancer recurrence.