Stroke is a leading cause of mortality and long-term disability and ischemic stroke accounts for 87% of all strokes. Though timely recanalization of the occluded vessel is essential in the treatment of ischemic stroke, it is well known to cause ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury which result in neuronal cell death, brain tissue loss and severe neurological deficits. In this work, we employed a global proteomic approach to examine the changes of cerebral cortex proteins in rats undergoing acute and long-term I/R injury. In vivo middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) model of focal cerebral I/R injury in rats was established. The animals were divided into three model groups with 2 h-MCAO followed with different reperfusion time, 1 day, 7 days and 14 days, respectively. For each model group a sham group was correspondingly set. Each group included four animals. For proteomic analysis, cerebral cortex proteins were extracted and analyzed by SDS-PAGE, whole-lane slicing, in-gel digestion and label-free quantitative LC-MS/MS. A total of 5621 proteins were identified and their quantities between the surgery and corresponding sham groups and across the three reperfusion time points were compared for mechanism investigation. This dataset includes all the raw files of the 840 LC-MS runs (6 groups x 4 animals x 35 gel squares/sample), as well as their identification and quantitation results at the levels of peptide fragments, peptides and proteins, respectively.