In the title mononuclear complex, [CdCl(2)(C(17)H(11)N(3)O)], the Cd(II) ion assumes a distorted trigonal-bipyramidal coordination geometry. The pyridone plane is twisted out of the 1,10-phenanthroline mean plane by 43.8 (3)°. In the crystal structure, short inter-molecular distances [3.627 (4)-3.671 (4) Å] between the centroids of the six- and five-membered Cd-containing rings suggest the existence of π-π inter-actions, which link the mol-ecules into stacks along the a axis.