Purpose To systematically review the published literature on surgical margins as a risk factor for local recurrence (LR) in patients undergoing partial nephrectomy (PN) for pT1 renal cell carcinomas (RCC). Evidence acquisition A systematic literature search of relevant databases (MEDLINE, Embase and the Cochrane Library) was performed according to the PRISMA criteria up to February 2022. The hypothesis was developed using the PPO method (Patients = patients with pT1 RCC undergoing PN, Prognostic factor = positive surgical margins (PSM) detected on final pathology versus negative surgical margins (NSM) and Outcome = LR diagnosed on follow-up imaging). The primary outcome was the rate of PSM and LR. The risk of bias was assessed by the QUIPS tool. Evidence synthesis After assessing 1525 abstracts and 409 full-text articles, eight studies met the inclusion criteria. The percentage of PSM ranged between 0 and 34.3%. In these patients with PSM, LR varied between 0 and 9.1%, whereas only 0–1.5% of LR were found in the NSM-group. The calculated odds ratio (95% confident intervals) varied between 0.04 [0.00–0.79] and 0.27 [0.01–4.76] and was statistically significant in two studies (0.14 [0.02–0.80] and 0.04 [0.00–0.79]). The quality analysis of the included studies resulted in an overall intermediate to high risk of bias and the level of evidence was overall very low. A meta-analysis was considered unsuitable due to the high heterogeneity between the included studies. Conclusion PSM after PN in patients with pT1 RCC is associated with a higher risk of LR. However, the evidence has significant limitations and caution should be taken with the interpretation of this data.