Background Chronic pain is defined as pain lasting beyond normal tissue healing time, generally taken to be 12 weeks. It contributes to disability, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, poor quality of life, and healthcare costs. Chronic pain has a weighted mean prevalence in adults of 20%. For many years, the treatment choice for chronic pain included recommendations for rest and inactivity. However, exercise may have specific benefits in reducing the severity of chronic pain, as well as more general benefits associated with improved overall physical and mental health, and physical functioning. Physical activity and exercise programmes are increasingly being promoted and o ered in various healthcare systems, and for a variety of chronic pain conditions. It is therefore important at this stage to establish the e icacy and safety of these programmes, and furthermore to address the critical factors that determine their success or failure. Objectives To provide an overview of Cochrane Reviews of adults with chronic pain to determine (1) the e ectiveness of di erent physical activity and exercise interventions in reducing pain severity and its impact on function, quality of life, and healthcare use; and (2) the evidence for any adverse e ects or harm associated with physical activity and exercise interventions. Methods We searched theCochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) on the Cochrane Library (CDSR 2016, Issue 1) for systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials (RCTs), a er which we tracked any included reviews for updates, and tracked protocols in case of full review publication until an arbitrary cut-o date of 21 March 2016 (CDSR 2016, Issue 3). We assessed the methodological quality of the reviews using the AMSTAR tool, and also planned to analyse data for each painful condition based on quality of the evidence. We extracted data for (1) self-reported pain severity, (2) physical function (objectively or subjectively measured), (3) psychological function, (4) quality of life, (5) adherence to the prescribed intervention, (6) healthcare use/attendance, (7) adverse events, and (8) death. Due to the limited data available, we were unable to directly compare and analyse interventions, and have instead reported the evidence qualitatively. Physical activity and exercise for chronic pain in adults: an overview of Cochrane Reviews (Review)