Increasing the turbine inlet temperature can enhance the thermal efficiency of a gas turbine. Therefore, modern gas turbines operate at a relatively high level of temperature and endure heavy thermal load. It is important to ensure the modern gas turbine works at a high performance and safe condition. Advanced cooling techniques are implemented in the gas turbine system. In the current study, effects of the cooling configurations layout near the first-stage vane leading edge on the endwall cooling and phantom cooling of the vane suction side surface were numerically investigated. Three-dimensional (3D) Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations combined with the shear stress transport (SST) k - omega turbulence model were solved to perform the simulations on basis of validation by comparing the experimental data and computational results. The results indicate that the layout of the cooling configurations has a significant influence on the endwall cooling, but a limited effect on the phantom cooling of the suction side surface and the aerodynamic performance. For each type, the endwall cooling and phantom cooling of the suction side surface are enhanced with the increase of the blowing ratio (M) of the leading edge coolant injection. Meanwhile, the thermodynamic loss is gradually enhanced. Overall, the Type B which has a partly blocked upstream slot achieves the best performance in terms of the coolant mass flowrate, endwall cooling, phantom cooling performance of the suction side surface and the aerodynamic performance at M = 1.0. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.