Common methods to synthesize 3-acylindoles include the Friedel-Crafts acylation, Vilsmeier-Haack reaction and indole Grignard reaction. Generally, these often suffer from side reactions, like N1-acylation or oligomerisation in the case of the Friedel-Crafts acylation, and involve harsh reaction conditions, such as the use of POCl3 in the Vilsmeier-Hack reaction. 12, As a consequence, the development of new, more efficient methods for the synthesis of 3acylated indoles is encouraged. In the last years, excellent methods for the synthesis of 3-acylindoles using preformed indoles have been developed. In contrast, approaches for their assembly from readily-available non-indole starting materials using a simple and expedient procedure still remain scarce with only very few examples involving visible light. Examples for successful photochemical reactions are, e.g., the direct coupling of anilines with alkynes or Langlois´ reagent under visible-light irradiation, as well as visible-light induced cyclizations of 2-alkynylated aniline derivatives, Aiming for a fast and efficient process to gain novel 3-acylindoles with diverse modifications in positions N1 and C2, we investigated the visible-light photoredox synthesis previously reported by Zhang et al. The proposed mechanism of this reaction involves a deprotonation step in the benzylic position of compound 4, resulting in the formation of a more stable α-amino benzyl radical which can undergo cyclization (Scheme 1a) to compounds of type 6. The most similar approach to the synthesis of 3-acylated indoles induced by a thermal process was realized via cyclization of alkynylated anilines involving 1,3-acyl shift (Scheme 1b). Scheme 1. Examples for syntheses of 3-acylindoles. a) Visible light-induced intramolecular oxidative cyclization of o-alkynylated N,N-dialkylamines; 19 b) Thermally induced, platinum-catalysed cyclization through 1,3-acyl shift.