The World Health Organization reports that cancer is still the second leading cause of death worldwide. The morbidity and mortality of upper gastrointestinal tract tumors mainly esophageal and gastric cancers are perennially high and traditional surgical radiotherapy and chemotherapy regimens often result in poor prognosis due to high recurrence rates and drug resistance. Therefore exploring new therapies for upper gastrointestinal tract tumors has tremendous clinical value. With the development of photosensitizers and endoscopic technology photodynamic therapy is gradually gaining recognition in the field of anti - tumor as a treatment option with easy operation fewer side effects and greater controllability. In esophageal cancer the efficacy of photodynamic therapy in superficial esophageal cancer and Barrett's esophagus has obvious advantages compared with traditional therapies while in gastric cancer photodynamic therapy can not only be used alone in early stage gastric cancer in anticipation of a curative effect but also can be used as one of the options for palliative treatment of gastric cancer in the progressive stage. Because of the high degree of mechanistic fit the combined application of photodynamic therapy with radiotherapy surgical treatment and immunotherapy is also being put into clinical trials which is expected to bring new opportunities for the treatment of patients with upper gastrointestinal tract tumors. In this paper we will briefly describe the epidemiology of upper gastrointestinal tract tumors and existing therapies focus on explaining the anti-cancer principle of photodynamic therapy and its application in esophageal and gastric cancers and finally make a prediction and outlook on its development direction.