Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is an aggressive malignancy with a high mortality on account of its frequent metastasis and poor prognosis. An extensive body of investigations has proven that long noncoding RNAs are implicated in a variety of biological processes. Although SOX2‐OT has been reported to play an oncogenic role in osteosarcoma, the mechanism of SOX2‐OT‐driven NPC progression is still obscure. The aim of this study was to elucidate the biological function of SOX2‐OT and the related possible mechanism in NPC. In our study, SOX2‐OT was notably elevated in NPC samples and cells. Further, a high expression level of SOX2‐OT was correlated with poor clinical outcomes of NPC. Results from loss‐of‐function experiments suggested that knockdown of SOX2‐OT repressed cell proliferation, arrested cell cycle, facilitated cell apoptosis, and inhibited cell metastasis of NPC. To further investigate the molecular mechanism of SOX2‐OT, miR‐146b‐5p was found to directly bind to SOX2‐OT, which mediated the role of SOX2‐OT in NPC tumorigenesis. In addition, HNRNPA2B1 was a target of miR‐146b‐5p and SOX2‐OT modulated the expression of HNRNPA2B1 through competitively binding to miR‐146b‐5p. At last, we discovered that SOX2‐OT regulated NPC progression by targeting miR‐146b‐5p/HNRNPA2B1 pathway, which may provide more innovative targets for the treatment of patients with NPC.