Nonsense‐mediated decay (NMD) is a eukaryotic quality control mechanism that degrades mRNAs carrying premature stop codons. In mammalian cells, NMD is triggered when UPF2 bound to UPF3 on a downstream exon junction complex interacts with UPF1 bound to a stalled ribosome. We report structural studies on the interaction between the C‐terminal region of UPF2 and intact UPF1. Crystal structures, confirmed by EM and SAXS, show that the UPF1 CH‐domain is docked onto its helicase domain in a fixed configuration. The C‐terminal region of UPF2 is natively unfolded but binds through separated α‐helical and β‐hairpin elements to the UPF1 CH‐domain. The α‐helical region binds sixfold more weakly than the β‐hairpin, whereas the combined elements bind 80‐fold more tightly. Cellular assays show that NMD is severely affected by mutations disrupting the beta‐hairpin binding, but not by those only affecting alpha‐helix binding. We propose that the bipartite mode of UPF2 binding to UPF1 brings the ribosome and the EJC in close proximity by forming a tight complex after an initial weak encounter with either element.