TIAA-CREF International Opportunities Fund

TIAA-CREF International Opportunities Fund

Investment objective

The Fund seeks a favorable long-term total return, mainly through capital appreciation, primarily from equity securities of foreign issuers.

Fees and expenses

This table describes the fees and expenses that you may pay if you buy and hold shares of the Fund:

SHAREHOLDER FEES (fees paid directly from your investment)

Shareholder Fees - TIAA-CREF International Opportunities Fund - USD ($)	Institutional Class	Advisor Class	Premier Class	Retirement Class	Retail Class
Maximum sales charge imposed on purchases (percentage of offering price)	none	none	none	none	none
Maximum deferred sales charge	none	none	none	none	none
Maximum sales charge imposed on reinvested dividends and other distributions	none	none	none	none	none
Redemption or exchange fee	none	none	none	none	none
Account maintenance fee (annual fee on accounts under $2,000)	none	none	none	none	$ 15.00

ANNUAL FUND OPERATING EXPENSES (expenses that you pay each year as a percentage of the value of your investment)

Annual Fund Operating Expenses - TIAA-CREF International Opportunities Fund		Institutional Class	Advisor Class		Premier Class	Retirement Class	Retail Class
Management fees		0.59%	0.59%		0.59%	0.59%	0.59%
Distribution (Rule 12b-1) fees					0.15%		0.25%
Other expenses		0.04%	0.13%	[1]	0.06%	0.29%	0.24%
Total annual Fund operating expenses		0.63%	0.72%		0.80%	0.88%	1.08%
Waivers and expense reimbursements	[2]
Total annual Fund operating expenses after fee waiver and/or expense reimbursement		0.63%	0.72%		0.80%	0.88%	1.08%

Example

This example is intended to help you compare the cost of investing in shares of the Fund with the cost of investing in other mutual funds. The example assumes that you invest $10,000 in the Fund for the time periods indicated and then redeem all your shares at the end of those periods. The example also assumes that your investment has a 5% return each year and that the Fund’s operating expenses, before expense reimbursements, remain the same. The example assumes that the Fund’s expense reimbursement agreement will remain in place through February 28, 2019, but that there will be no waiver or expense reimbursement agreement in effect thereafter. Although your actual costs may be higher or lower, based on these assumptions your costs would be:

Expense Example - TIAA-CREF International Opportunities Fund - USD ($)	Institutional Class	Advisor Class	Premier Class	Retirement Class	Retail Class
1 year	$ 64	$ 74	$ 82	$ 90	$ 110
3 years	202	230	255	281	343
5 years	351	401	444	488	595
10 years	$ 786	$ 894	$ 990	$ 1,084	$ 1,317

Portfolio turnover

The Fund pays transaction costs, such as commissions, when it buys and sells securities (or “turns over” its portfolio). A higher portfolio turnover rate may indicate higher transaction costs and may result in higher taxes when Fund shares are held in a taxable account. These costs, which are not reflected in annual fund operating expenses or in the example, affect the Fund’s performance. During the fiscal year ended October 31, 2017, the Fund’s portfolio turnover rate was 24% of the average value of its portfolio.

Principal investment strategies

The Fund primarily invests in equity securities of issuers in developed and emerging markets located around the world but outside the United States. The Fund anticipates investing in a number of foreign markets, but at a minimum it will invest in at least three countries outside the United States. The Fund’s investment adviser, Teachers Advisors, LLC (“Advisors”), selects individual stocks, and lets the Fund’s country and regional asset allocations evolve from this stock selection. The Fund may invest in companies of all sizes.

Advisors typically invests in companies that it believes can demonstrate positive and sustainable structural change. In addition, Advisors looks for companies in the early stages of a structural growth opportunity driven by differentiated products and/or services that maintain strong barriers to entry, continue to outgrow peers and demonstrate accelerating top-line growth with margin expansion. Advisors will typically invest in these types of companies when Advisors believes that their stock prices do not fully reflect the stock’s potential value, based on current earnings, assets and long-term growth prospects.

The Fund is actively managed; however, Advisors regularly reviews the Fund’s sector and country exposure against the Fund’s benchmark index, the Morgan Stanley Capital International ACWI (All Country World Index) ex USA^®Index (the “MSCI ACWI ex USA Index”), to seek to control risk.

The Fund may purchase and sell futures, options, swaps and other equity derivatives to carry out the Fund’s investment strategies.

Principal investment risks

You could lose money over short or long periods by investing in this Fund. An investment in the Fund, due to the nature of the Fund’s portfolio holdings, typically is subject to the following principal investment risks:

· Market Risk—The risk that market prices of portfolio investments held by the Fund may fall rapidly or unpredictably due to a variety of factors, including changing economic, political or market conditions. Market risk may affect a single issuer, industry or sector of the economy, or it may affect the market as a whole.

· Issuer Risk (often called Financial Risk)—The risk that an issuer’s earnings prospects and overall financial position will deteriorate, causing a decline in the value of the issuer’s financial instruments over short or extended periods of time.

· Active Management Risk—The risk that Advisors’ strategy, investment selection or trading execution may cause the Fund to underperform relative to the benchmark index or mutual funds with similar investment objectives.

· Foreign Investment Risk—Foreign markets can be more volatile than the U.S. market due to increased risks of adverse issuer, political, regulatory, currency, market or economic developments and can result in greater price volatility and perform differently from financial instruments of U.S. issuers. This risk may be heightened in emerging or developing markets. Foreign investments may also be less liquid and more difficult to value than investments in U.S. issuers.

· Emerging Markets Risk—The risk of foreign investment often increases in countries with emerging markets. For example, these countries may have more unstable governments than developed countries, and their economies may be based on only a few industries. Because their financial markets may be very small, share prices of financial instruments in emerging market countries may be volatile and difficult to determine. Financial instruments of issuers in these countries may be less liquid than those of issuers in more developed countries. In addition, foreign investors such as the Fund are subject to a variety of special restrictions in many emerging market countries. Frontier markets are those emerging markets that are considered to be among the smallest, least mature and least liquid, and as a result, the risks of investing in emerging markets are magnified in frontier markets.

· Large-Cap Risk—The risk that large-capitalization companies are more mature and may grow more slowly than the economy as a whole and tend to go in and out of favor based on market and economic conditions.

· Mid-Cap Risk—The risk that the stocks of mid-capitalization companies often experience greater price volatility, lower trading volume and less liquidity than the stocks of larger, more established companies.

· Small-Cap Risk—The risk that the stocks of small-capitalization companies often experience greater price volatility than large- or mid-sized companies because small-cap companies are often newer or less established than larger companies and are likely to have more limited resources, products and markets. Securities of small-cap companies are often less liquid than securities of larger companies as a result of there being a smaller market for their securities, which can have an adverse effect on the pricing of these securities and on the ability to sell these securities when Advisors deems it appropriate.

· Illiquid Investments Risk—The risk that illiquid investments may be difficult to sell for the value at which they are carried, if at all, or at any price within the desired time frame.

· Derivatives Risk—The risks associated with investing in derivatives may be different and greater than the risks associated with directly investing in the underlying securities and other instruments. The Fund may use futures, options, single name or index credit default swaps, or forwards, and the Fund may also use more complex derivatives such as swaps that might present liquidity, credit and counterparty risk. When investing in derivatives, the Fund may lose more than the principal amount invested.

Please see the non-summary portion of the Prospectus for more detailed information about the risks described above.

Past performance

The following chart and table help illustrate some of the risks of investing in the Fund by showing changes in the Fund’s performance from year to year. The bar chart shows the annual total returns of the Institutional Class of the Fund, before taxes, in each full calendar year since inception of the Institutional Class. Because the expenses vary across share classes, the performance of the Institutional Class may vary from the other share classes. Below the bar chart are the best and worst returns of the Institutional Class for a calendar quarter during the full calendar-year periods covered by the bar chart. The performance table following the bar chart shows the Fund’s average annual total returns for the Institutional, Advisor, Premier, Retirement and Retail classes over the applicable one-year, five-year, ten-year and since-inception periods ended December 31, 2017, and how those returns compare to those of the Fund’s benchmark index. After-tax performance is shown only for Institutional Class shares, and after-tax returns for the other classes of shares will vary from the after-tax returns presented for Institutional Class shares.

The returns shown below reflect previous agreements by Advisors to waive, reimburse and/or compensate the Fund for certain fees, expenses and/or costs. Without these reductions and/or compensation, the returns of the Fund would have been lower. Past performance of the Fund (before and after taxes) is not necessarily an indication of how it will perform in the future. The benchmark index listed below is unmanaged, and you cannot invest directly in an index. The returns for the benchmark index reflect no deduction for fees, expenses or taxes.

For current performance information of each share class, including performance to the most recent month-end, please visit www.tiaa.org. For information on the effect of compensation paid to the Fund on performance, see the Financial highlights for the Fund in this Prospectus.

ANNUAL TOTAL RETURNS FOR THE INSTITUTIONAL CLASS SHARES (%) International Opportunities Fund

Best quarter: 9.34%, for the quarter ended September 30, 2017. Worst quarter: -9.95%, for the quarter ended September 30, 2015.

AVERAGE ANNUAL TOTAL RETURNS For the Periods Ended December 31, 2017

Average Annual Returns - TIAA-CREF International Opportunities Fund	1 Year	Since Inception		Inception Date
Institutional Class	35.20%	7.52%		Apr. 12, 2013
Advisor Class	35.31%	7.51%	[1]	Dec. 04, 2015
Premier Class	35.07%	7.35%		Apr. 12, 2013
Retirement Class	34.89%	7.24%		Apr. 12, 2013
Retail Class	34.75%	7.10%		Apr. 12, 2013
After Taxes on Distributions | Institutional Class	34.95%	7.30%
After Taxes on Distributions and Sale of Fund Shares | Institutional Class	20.36%	5.92%
MSCI ACWI ex USA Index (reflects no deductions for fees, expenses or taxes)	27.19%	6.24%	[2]

Current performance of the Fund’s shares may be higher or lower than that shown above.

After-tax returns are calculated using the historical highest individual federal marginal income tax rates in effect during the periods shown and do not reflect the impact of state and local taxes. Actual after-tax returns depend on the investor’s tax situation and may differ from those shown. The after-tax returns shown are not relevant to investors who hold their Fund shares through tax-deferred arrangements such as 401(a), 401(k) or 403(b) plans or Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). After-tax returns are shown for only one class, and after-tax returns for other classes will vary.

[1] Estimate is for the current fiscal year.

[2] Under the Fund's expense reimbursement arrangements, the Fund's investment adviser, Teachers Advisors, LLC, has contractually agreed to reimburse the Fund for any Total annual Fund operating expenses (excluding interest, taxes, brokerage commissions or other transactional expenses, Acquired fund fees and expenses and extraordinary expenses) that exceed: (i) 0.70% of average daily net assets for Institutional Class shares; (ii) 0.85% of average daily net assets for Advisor Class shares; (iii) 0.85% of average daily net assets for Premier Class shares; (iv) 0.95% of average daily net assets for Retirement Class shares; and (v) 1.09% of average daily net assets for Retail Class shares of the Fund. These expense reimbursement arrangements will continue through at least February 28, 2019, unless changed with approval of the Board of Trustees.

[1] The performance shown for the Advisor Class that is prior to its inception date is based on performance of the Fund's Institutional Class. The performance for these periods has not been restated to reflect higher expenses of the Advisor Class. If those expenses had been reflected, the performance would have been lower.

[2] Performance is calculated from the inception date of the Institutional Class.