Rectal cancer has seen an explosion of data from new trials adding chemotherapy to (chemo)radiation before consideration of surgery. Just some of the trials include OPRA, PRODIGE 23, PROSPECT, RAPIDO and STELLAR. The trials all have different regimens and different toxicity, and they haven’t yet been compared against each other. So which one is ‘best’? I will go over a schema to help clinicians consider which regimens are ‘best’ for which patients, according to the clinical goal, patient and tumour characteristics.