Cavitation phenomenon has a strong influence on the internal flow and spray development in diesel injector nozzles. Despite its importance, there are lots of aspects which remain still unclear, especially at partial needle lifts when the injector is in the opening and closing phases. For that reason, the current paper is focused on the influence of the needle lift on the internal flow in a diesel nozzle. This study has been carried out with 3D simulations at high injection pressure (160 MPa) using a homogeneous equilibrium model implemented in OpenFOAM to model cavitation phenomenon.The nozzle has been simulated with LES methods at six different needle lifts (10, 30, 50, 75, 100 and 250 μm), providing relevant information about the evolution of the internal flow, the turbulence development (vorticity, turbulence-cavitation interaction and turbulent structures) and the flow characteristics in the nozzle outlet (mass flow, momentum flux and effective velocity) with the needle position.