Abstract Background Pan-cancer studies have disclosed many commonalities and differences in mutations, copy number variations, and gene expression alterations among cancers. Some of these features are significantly associated with clinical outcomes, and many prognosis-predictive biomarkers or biosignatures have been proposed for specific cancer types. Here, we systematically explored the biological functions and the distribution of survival-related genes (SRGs) across cancers. Results We carried out two different statistical survival models on the mRNA expression profiles in 33 cancer types from TCGA. We identified SRGs in each cancer type based on the Cox proportional hazards model and the log-rank test. We found a large difference in the number of SRGs among different cancer types, and most of the identified SRGs were specific to a particular cancer type. While these SRGs were unique to each cancer type, they were found mostly enriched in cancer hallmark pathways, e.g., cell proliferation, cell differentiation, DNA metabolism, and RNA metabolism. We also analyzed the association between cancer driver genes and SRGs and did not find significant over-representation amongst most cancers. Conclusions In summary, our work identified all the SRGs for 33 cancer types from TCGA. In addition, the pan-cancer analysis revealed the similarities and the differences in the biological functions of SRGs across cancers. Given the potential of SRGs in clinical utility, our results can serve as a resource for basic research and biotech applications.