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Background A new staging system recently proposed by the IGCA has demonstrated a better capacity of stratifying different prognoses for gastric cancer than the 7th edition AJCC staging system (AJCC7). The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of the IGCA system in Chinese patients. Methods Medical records of patients with gastric cancer who received curative surgery in our center from January 2003 to December 2011 were reviewed retrospectively. All the lesions were staged according to both AJCC7 and IGCA staging systems. Overall survival (OS) of the patients was used as the observation endpoint. Results One thousand five hundred twenty-six cases were included in this study. By comparing the AJCC7 system with the IGCA systems, 395 cases were stratified into different stages, most of which were in stage III. The IGCA system could better stratify stage IIIB and IIIC patients (5-year OS, 38.1% vs. 29.0%; P = 0.005) than the AJCC7 system (5-year OS, 38.2% vs. 35.9%; P = 0.148). T3N3bM0, T4aN2M0 and T4aN3bM0 made up 97.5% (385/395) of the stage shift. T3N3bM0, which was stratified to stage IIIB in the AJCC7 system, showed a significant poorer prognosis than T4aN2M0 and T4aN3aM0, which were staged to IIIB and IIIC in the same system. The improper staging was revised in the IGCA staging system. Conclusions The IGCA staging system can stratify stage III gastric cancer patients more properly than the AJCC7 system. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12885-017-3235-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.