Centrifugal pumps are considered as machines of high importance in a wide range of industries, hence several strategies and methods have been developed in order to ensure their optimum performance under different operating conditions. An important mechanism that can affect pump’s steady and dynamic operation is cavitation, which appears in the low static pressure zone at the inlet of the impeller. Several researchers have studied experimentally the physics of the phenomenon in order to develop different methodologies for its safe detection. The aim of this paper is to study the onset and evolution of cavitation in a centrifugal pump with unshrouded impeller by performing of flow visualization and acoustic emission measurements. The results showed that the acoustic emission technique is able to detect the onset of cavitation, while the leakage backflow through the clearance affects the development of cavitation between the impeller blades.