The quantum statistical parton distributions approach proposed more than one decade ago is revisited by considering a larger set of recent and accurate Deep Inelastic Scattering experimental results. It enables us to improve the description of the data by means of a new determination of the parton distributions for the nucleon. This global next-to-leading order QCD analysis leads to a good description of several structure functions, involving unpolarized parton distributions and helicity distributions, in a broad range of x and Q2 and in terms of a rather small number of free parameters. There are several challenging issues, in particular the d=u at large x, the large positive gluon helicity distribution, etc... The predictions of this theoretical approach was tested for single-jet production, Drell-Yan process for gauge boson production in pp and pp collisions up to LHC energies.
This statistical approach will be extended to study the pion structure by means of the Drell-Yan process with meson beams.
