In addition to central functions in cell adhesion signalling, integrin-associated proteins have wider roles at sites distal to adhesion receptors. In experimentally defined adhesomes, there is clear enrichment of proteins that localise to the nucleus, and conversely, we now report that nuclear proteomes contain a subset of adhesome components that localise to the nucleus of cancer cells. We have defined a nucleo-adhesome, providing evidence for the remarkable scale of nuclear localisation of adhesion proteins, establishing a framework for interrogating nuclear adhesion protein functions. In addition to focal adhesion kinase (FAK), which has well-known nuclear roles, we now show that integrin-linked kinase (ILK) is another example of a biologically important nuclear adhesion protein: ILK is needed to keep squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cancer cells alive under stress.