SUMMARY Esophageal carcinoma (EC) occurs at high rate in Chaoshan region of southern China. Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) polymorphism has been implicated in risk for various cancers. To investigate the impact of HLA‐A and HLA‐B polymorphisms on susceptibility to EC, a case–control study was conducted among 206 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and 524 controls from Chaoshan Han population. HLA‐A and HLA‐B polymorphisms were genotyped by polymerase chain reaction‐sequence‐specific primers. Genotypic association tests for dominant, recessive, and additive models, and haplotypic association were calculated using unconditional logistic regression. A*11 was identified in a recessive model as an only allele strongly associated with EC risk (odds ratios OR= 2.10, 95% confidence interval CI= 1.33–3.31) even after correction for multiple test. The haplotypes A*02‐B*46 (OR = 1.53, 95% CI = 1.04–2.24) and A*11‐B*51 (OR = 2.29, 95% CI = 1.20–4.40) showed association with increased risk for EC, whereas A*11‐B*58 (OR = 0.00, 95% CI = 0.00–0.82) was associated with decreased risk, though the significance of these haplotypes was lost after correction. This is a first association study at genetic level identifying HLA‐A and HLA‐B‐related variations in genetic susceptibility to EC among Chaoshan population. The variation pattern is likely to be EC‐specific because it is different from that observed for nasopharyngeal carcinoma in the same study population and might, at least in part, explain the high rate of EC in this ethnic group.