Brainstem gliomas are usually associated with serious dysfunction and poor prognosis especially for diffuse intrinsic brainstem gliomas; however, the reasons are still unclear. Some clinical studies have suggested that the invasive ability may be different among brainstem gliomas, and the dysfunction of beta-catenin and E-and N-cadherin appears to be connected with tumor invasion and progression. In this study, the expression of beta-catenin and E-and N-cadherin was detected in 40 brainstem glioma samples using immunochemistry and was further analyzed in 18 samples using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. The clinicopathological characteristics were also analyzed. The results show that there was no obvious staining for E-cadherin, but weak expression at the messenger RNA (mRNA) level could be seen in a few samples. The protein and mRNA expression levels of beta-catenin and N-cadherin were significantly associated with the pathological grades of brainstem gliomas. No significant differences in the expression levels of beta-catenin and N-cadherin were observed for age, sex, location or diffuse growing pattern. The overall survival of patients with low beta-catenin expression was longer than that with high beta-catenin expression, and there was a trend toward increased expression of N-cadherin with shorter survival; however, both of them had no statistical differences. These results demonstrate that expression of beta-catenin and N-cadherin is associated with the malignant progression of brainstem gliomas but not correlated with the diffuse and invasive growing pattern. beta-catenin and N-cadherin are potential therapeutic targets and prognostic markers for brainstem glioma, which need to be validated in a larger patient cohort.