Global warming threatens many aspects of human life, for example, by reducing crop yields. Breeding heat-tolerant crops using genes conferring thermotolerance is a fundamental way to help deal with this challenge. Here we identify a major quantitative trait locus (QTL) for thermotolerance in African rice (Oryza glaberrima), Thermo-tolerance 1 (TT1), which encodes an α2 subunit of the 26S proteasome involved in the degradation of ubiquitinated proteins. Ubiquitylome analysis indicated that OgTT1 protects cells from heat stress through more efficient elimination of cytotoxic denatured proteins and more effective maintenance of heat-response processes than achieved with OsTT1. Variation in TT1 has been selected for on the basis of climatic temperature and has had an important role in local adaptation during rice evolution. In addition, we found that overexpression of OgTT1 was associated with markedly enhanced thermotolerance in rice, Arabidopsis and Festuca elata. This discovery may lead to an increase in crop security in the face of the ongoing threat of global warming.