Objective To explore the expressions of collagen type I α1 chain (COL1A1) and karyopherinα2 (KPNA2) in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) tissues and their relationship with long-term prognosis. Methods A total of 87 patients with TNBC who were treated in the hospital from June 2016 to June 2017 were collected as the research subjects. The cancer tissue and adjacent tissue samples were collected from the patients after surgery, and immunohistochemistry was used to detect the expressions of COL1A1 and KPNA2 in the tissue samples, and the relationship between the expressions of the two and the pathological characteristics of patients was analyzed. Survival curve was drawn to analyze the relationship between the expressions of the two and the 5-year prognosis of patients. COX regression model was adopted to analyze the factors affecting the prognosis survival of patients. Results The high expression rates of COL1A1 and KPNA2 in TNBC cancer tissues were significantly higher than those in adjacent tissues (P<0.05). In TNBC cancer tissues, the high expressions of COL1A1 and KPNA2 were related to histological grading, vascular invasion and lymph node metastasis (P<0.05), and the high expression of COL1A1 was also related to clinical staging (P<0.05). After 5 years of follow-up, the overall survival rate of 87 patients was 78.16% (68/87), and the patients with high COL1A1 expression had a shorter survival time (P<0.05), and those with high KPNA2 expression had a shorter survival time than those with lower KPNA2 expression (P<0.05). COX regression analysis showed that clinical stage Ⅲ, presence of lymph node metastasis, high expression of COL1A1 and high expression of KPNA2 were the influencing factors for prognosis survival of patients with triple-negative breast cancer (P<0.05). Conclusion The expressions of COL1A1 and KPNA2 are increased in the cancer tissues of patients with TNBC, and their high expressions are related to the histological grading, vascular invasion and lymph node metastasis of patients, and can affect the long-term prognosis of patients