Background: Osteosarcoma is the most common malignancy of bone. Intratumoral hypoxia occurs in many solid tumors, where it is associated with the development of aggressive phenotype. ANRIL has been shown to be a long noncoding RNA that facilitates the progression of a number of malignancies. Yet, few studies have explored the expression pattern of ANRIL in osteosarcoma and the effect of hypoxia on ANRIL. Methods: We evaluated the expression levels of ANRIL in osteosarcoma tissues, adjacent normal tissues and cells with quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Multiple approaches including luciferase reporter assay with nucleotide substitutions, chromatin immunoprecipitation assay and electrophoretic mobility shift assay were used to confirm the direct binding of HIF-1 alpha to the ANRIL promoter region. SiRNA-based knockdown and other molecular biology techniques were employed to measure the effect of HIF-1 alpha on the expression of ANRIL. Results: We found that the expression of ANRIL was upregulated in 15 pairs of osteosarcoma compared with adjacent normal tissues. We found that hypoxia is sufficient to upregulate ANRIL expression in osteosarcoma cells (MNNG and U2OS). HIF-1 alpha directly binds to the putative hypoxia response element in the upstream region of ANRIL. What's more, siRNA and small molecular inhibitors-mediated HIF-1 alpha suppression attenuated ANRIL upregulation under hypoxic conditions. Upon hypoxia, ANRIL promoted cancer cell invasion and suppressed cell apoptosis. Conclusion: Taken together, these data suggest that HIF-1 alpha may contribute to the upregulation of ANRIL in osteosarcoma under hypoxic conditions. ANRIL is involved in hypoxia-induced aggressive phenotype in osteosarcoma.