Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA) is a hepatic malignant tumor that arises from the epithelial cells of the intrahepatic bile ducts and its incidence is increasing worldwide. Patients with iCCA have a poor prognosis because of the aggressiveness of the tumor, delayed diagnosis and lack of effective treatment. Therefore, seeking novel molecular biomarkers and accurate assessment of disease progression are critical to optimize treatment strategies for iCCA. Here, we found that the mRNA levels of SLC2A1 (encoding glucose transporter 1, GLUT1) increased significantly in different types of solid tumor tissues, compared with their adjacent normal tissues, through the TCGA database. By further analysis of the protein expression of GLUT1 in 95 paraffin-embedded iCCA samples by immunohistochemistry, we found that GLUT1 expression was significantly upregulated in tumor tissues compared with adjacent non-tumor tissues. Importantly, high GLUT1 expression was significantly correlated with vascular invasion, advanced T stage, advanced N stage and advanced TNM stage. Survival analysis revealed that iCCA patients with high GLUT1 expression had a worse overall survival. In addition, we established a nomogram which incorporated age, tumor size and GLUT1 expression to estimate the prognosis of iCCA. The nomogram exhibited robust discriminatory ability, accuracy, and clinical usefulness in predicting patients’ overall survival after resection. In conclusion, our study clarified the prognostic value of GLUT1 and provided an effective and accurate prognostic model for evaluating the prognosis of iCCA patients.