A simple, efficient palladium(II) acetate/ tri-tert-butylphosphine-catalyzed indole synthesis from o-alkynylhalobenzenes, readily available from 1,2-dihalobenzenes, has been achieved in good to excellent yields. A one-pot, Pd(OAc) 2 /t-Bu 3 P-catalyzed sequential reaction from 1-chloro-2-iodobenzene, phenylacetylene and amines has also been achieved in good yields.Keywords: alkynylation; amination; 1,2-dihalobenzenes; indoles; palladium; phosphane ligands Many natural products and biologically active compounds contain indole skeleton as their structural subunits.[1] Such a prevalence stimulated the development of a number of methods for indole synthesis in past decades. [1 -3] Among the methods developed, the palladium-catalyzed transformations of o-haloanilines via alkynylation to form o-alkynylanilines followed by intramolecular hydroamination have been studied intensively and represent a fruitful strategy to access 2-substituted indoles. [2,3] As part of our program directed to develop new sequential and tandem reactions based on powerful cross-coupling reactions, [4,5] we became interested in developing sequential/tandem reactions for the efficient synthesis of heterocycles including indoles from readily available starting materials. Based on our analysis of possible routes to the key intermediate o-alkynylanilines for the synthesis of 2-substituted indoles, we reasoned that readily available 1,2-dihalobenzenes could be suitable starting materials to access o-alkynylanilines via an alkynylation followed by an amination sequence (Scheme 1). This possible route appeared to be very attractive considering: (a) due to the electronic nature of alkynyl groups, o-alkynylhalobenzenes are expected to be more reactive than strong deactivating amino group-containing o-haloanilines, and are thus expected to behave similarly like other o-substituted halobenzenes for the Buchwald-Hartwig aminations [6] and (b) o-alkynylhalobenzenes, especially o-alkynylchlorobenzenes, have been well-established to be readily accessible from the monoalkynylation of 1,2-dihalobenzenes. [7,8] Based on the fact that enormous progress has been achieved in Pd(0)-catalyzed amination reactions in recent years and different types of aryl halides including aryl chlorides have been demonstrated as suitable substrates, [6,9] we believed that the amination of o-alkynylhalobenzenes including o-alkynylchlorobenzenes could be possible and the strategy of alkynylation followed by amination of 1,2-dihalobenzenes would provide us an efficient and general method to access 2-substituted indoles.[10] Herein our results are reported.