The contemporary associations of type 2 diabetes with a wide range of incident cardiovascular diseases have not been compared. We aimed to study associations between type 2 diabetes and 12 initial manifestations of cardiovascular disease. We used linked primary care, hospital admission, disease registry, and death certificate records from the CALIBER programme, which links data for people in England recorded in four electronic health data sources. We included people who were (or turned) 30 years or older between Jan 1, 1998, to March 25, 2010, who were free from cardiovascular disease at baseline. The primary endpoint was the first record of one of 12 cardiovascular presentations in any of the data sources. We compared cumulative incidence curves for the initial presentation of cardiovascular disease and used Cox models to estimate cause-specific hazard ratios (HRs). This study is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01804439). Our cohort consisted of 1 921 260 individuals, of whom 1 887 062 (98·2%) did not have diabetes and 34 198 (1·8%) had type 2 diabetes. We observed 113 638 first presentations of cardiovascular disease during a median follow-up of 5·5 years (IQR 2·1–10·1). Of people with type 2 diabetes, 6137 (17·9%) had a first cardiovascular presentation, the most common of which were peripheral arterial disease (reported in 992 16·2% of 6137 patients) and heart failure (866 14·1% of 6137 patients). Type 2 diabetes was positively associated with peripheral arterial disease (adjusted HR 2·98 95% CI 2·76–3·22), ischaemic stroke (1·72 1·52–1·95), stable angina (1·62 1·49–1·77), heart failure (1·56 1·45–1·69), and non-fatal myocardial infarction (1·54 1·42–1·67), but was inversely associated with abdominal aortic aneurysm (0·46 0·35–0·59) and subarachnoid haemorrhage (0·48 0·26–0.89), and not associated with arrhythmia or sudden cardiac death (0·95 0·76–1·19). Heart failure and peripheral arterial disease are the most common initial manifestations of cardiovascular disease in type 2 diabetes. The differences between relative risks of different cardiovascular diseases in patients with type 2 diabetes have implications for clinical risk assessment and trial design. Wellcome Trust, National Institute for Health Research, and Medical Research Council.