In this paper, the improved fractional sub-equation method is applied to obtain analytical solutions of the (2+1)-dimensional space–time fractional Bogoyavlenskii’s breaking soliton equation involving Jumarie’s modified Riemann–Liouville derivative in mathematical physics. As a result, explicit analytical solutions are successfully obtained, which contain more generalized hyperbolic function solutions, generalized trigonometric function solutions and rational solutions. The graphical representations have been used for demonstrating the nature of the obtained results.