Autophagy is a regulated mechanism that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional cellular components and recycles metabolic substrates. In response to stress signals in the tumour microenvironment, the autophagy pathway is altered in tumour cells and immune cells -thereby differentially affecting tumour progression, immunity and therapy. In this Review, we summarize our current understanding of the immunologically associated roles and modes of action of the autophagy pathway in cancer progression and therapy, and discuss potential approaches targeting autophagy to enhance antitumour immunity and improve the efficacy of current cancer therapy.Autophagy is a tightly regulated and stress-induced catabolic pathway in all eukaryotes, during which double-membraned vesicles (called autophagosomes) are formed that engulf cellular targets -including damaged organelles, unfolded proteins and pathogens -and deliver them to the lysosome to be digested 1 . Selective forms of autophagy represent quality control and homeostatic mechanisms (BOX 1). The basic biology of autophagy has been extensively reviewed [2][3][4] . The canonical form of autophagy under discussion herein (more formally, macro-autophagy) is best understood under conditions of nutrient starvation 5 (FIG. 1). In the non-canonical autophagy pathway, proteins also function to lipidate microtubuleassociated protein 1A/1B-light chain 3 (LC3; also known as ATG8) family proteins on a single lipid bilayer. The most studied examples of this are LC3-associated phagocytosis (LAP) 6 and the more recently described LC3-associated endocytosis (LANDO) 7 (FIG. 1).