Pulmonary nodules are often encountered by respiratory physicians, radiologists, and thoracic surgeons alike. The European Society of Thoracic Surgery (ESTS) and European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgery (EACTS) established a multidisciplinary collaboration of clinicians with expertise in managing pulmonary nodules with the aim of producing the first joint comprehensive review of the scientific literature, with a specific focus on the management of pure ground glass opacities and part-solid nodules. The scope of the document has been defined by the EACTS and ESTS governing bodies and focuses on six areas of main interest agreed upon by the Task Force. These include: management of solitary and multiple pure ground glass nodules, solitary part-solid nodules, identifying the non-palpable lesion, the role of minimally invasive surgery and the decision making behind sub-lobar versus lobar resection. The literature revealed that with the increasing use of incidental CT scans and CT lung cancer screening programs, the detection of early-stage lung cancer is going to rise with a higher number of potential cancers presenting on the ground glass and part-solid nodule spectrum. Given that the gold standard for improved survival is surgical resection, there is an urgent need for comprehensive characterisation of these nodules and guidelines that are directed towards their surgical management. It is recommended that standard decision-making tools are used to determine the risk of malignancy and thus guide referral for surgical management and decisions for surgical resection are made in a multidisciplinary setting with equitable consideration given to radiological characteristics, the evolution of the lesion, presence of solid component, patient fitness and co-morbidities. Given the recent surge in robust level I data comparing sublobar and lobar resection with the release of JCOG0802 and CALGB140503 data, a global overview of an individual case must be adopted into clinical practice. This set of recommendations are based on the available literature; however, close collaboration in the design and conduct of randomized controlled trials is still of utmost importance to answer further questions in this rapidly evolving field.