Recent findings suggest that upregulated a disintegrin and metalloproteinase (ADAM)10 expression participates in the progression of multiple types of cancer. However, the expression pattern and clinicopathological significance of ADAM10, and its potential prognostic role in laryngeal carcinoma remains to be explored. The present study firstly determined the significantly elevated expression status of ADAM10 protein and messenger RNA in laryngeal carcinoma tissues compared with that in adjacent non-tumor tissues by western blotting and reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis. Next, the expression of ADAM10 and the proliferation marker Ki-67 was examined in 78 laryngeal carcinoma and 35 adjacent non-tumor specimens using immunohistochemistry. Overexpressed ADAM10 in laryngeal carcinoma was detected, which correlated with T classification (P<0.01), clinical stage (P<0.01), pathology (P=0.034) and Ki-67 expression (P<0.01). Furthermore, the expression of ADAM10 was positively correlated with the expression of Ki-67 (R2=0.22; P<0.01). The Kaplan-Meier method revealed that the group with overexpressed ADAM10 exhibited shorter overall survival time compared with those with low ADAM10 expression. Our findings indicated that ADAM10 serves a notable role in the progression and prognosis of laryngeal carcinoma.