Background There is a paucity of studies on the general pattern of urinary bladder biopsies in the Nigerian literature. This retrospective study was therefore undertaken to analyse the pattern of urinary bladder biopsies as seen at the University College Hospital Ibadan, Nigeria over a twenty-four year period. Methods Four hundred and sixty-nine cases of urinary bladder biopsies diagnosed between January 1990 and December 2013 were obtained from the records of the Department of Pathology, University College Hospital, Ibadan. Clinical details were retrieved from the surgical pathology request forms and case notes of these patients. The original slides or new slides prepared from blocks of paraffin-embedded tissues were reviewed. The neoplastic lesions were classified according to the 2004 WHO classification for urinary tract neoplasms.