We performed a meta-analysis of five genome-wide association studies to identify common variants influencing colorectal cancer (CRC) risk comprising 8,682 cases and 9,649 controls. Replication analysis was performed in case-control sets totaling 21,096 cases and 19,555 controls. We identified three new CRC risk loci at 6p21 (rs1321311, near CDKN1A; P = 1.14 × 10 ), 11q13.4 (rs3824999, intronic to POLD3; P = 3.65 × 10 ) and Xp22.2 (rs5934683, near SHROOM2; P = 7.30 × 10 ) This brings the number of independent loci associated with CRC risk to 20 and provides further insight into the genetic architecture of inherited susceptibility to CRC. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.