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Background Lung sleeve resection is indicated for centrally located lung tumors, especially for patients who cannot tolerate pneumonectomy. With video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) being increasingly implemented for a wide variety of thoracic pathologies, this study aims to compare the intraoperative, postoperative, and long-term outcomes of VATS and open bronchial sleeve lobectomy for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods The MEDLINE (via PubMed), Cochrane Library, and Scopus databases were searched. Original clinical studies, comparing VATS and open sleeve lobectomy for NSCLC were included. Evidence was synthesized as odds ratios for categorical and weighted mean difference (WMD) for continuous variables. Results Our analysis included six studies with non-overlapping populations reporting on 655 patients undergoing bronchial sleeve lobectomy for NSCLC (229 VATS and 426 open). VATS sleeve lobectomy was associated with significantly longer operative time ((WMD): 45.85 min, 95% confidence interval (CI): 12.06 to 79.65, p = 0.01) but less intraoperative blood loss ((WMD): −34.57 mL, 95%CI: −58.35 to −10.78, p Conclusions The limitation of our study arises mainly due to the heterogeneity of the included studies. Nevertheless, VATS bronchial sleeve lung resection constitutes a feasible and safe alternative to the open sleeve lung resection surgery for the management of centrally located lung tumors.