The guiding idea behind oxy-fuel combustion power cycles is guaranteeing a high level of performance as can be obtained by today's advanced power plants, together with CO2 separation in conditions ready for transport and final disposal. In order to achieve all these goals, oxy-combustion - allowing CO2 separation by simple cooling of the combustion products - is combined with large heat recovery and staged expansions/compressions, making use of new components, technology and materials upgraded from modern gas turbine engines. In order to provide realistic results, the power plant performance should include the effects of blade cooling. In the present work an advanced cooled expansion model has been included in the model of the MATIANT cycle in order to assess the effects of blade cooling on the cycle efficiency. The results show that the penalty in efficiency due to blade cooling using steam from the heat recovery boiler is about 1.4 percentage points, mainly due to the reheat of the steam, which, on the other hand, leads to an improvement in specific work of about 6%. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.