Long noncoding RNA CCAL has been reported to promote tumor progression in various human cancers, including hepatocellular carcinoma, osteosarcoma, and colorectal cancer. However, the role of CCAL in papillary thyroid cancer remains largely unknown. In the present study, we found that the expression of CCAL was upregulated in papillary thyroid tumor tissues compared to adjacent normal tissues. Moreover, the expression of CCAL was positively related with papillary thyroid cancer severity and TNM stage and predicated poor prognosis. Besides, we found that knockdown of CCAL significantly inhibited papillary thyroid cancer cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro and reduced tumor growth and metastasis in vivo. We found that knockdown of CCAL dramatically decreased the expression of NOTCH1 and suppressed the activation of the NOTCH1 signaling pathway. Furthermore, overexpression of NOTCH1 rescued the proliferation, migration, and invasion in papillary thyroid cancer cells. Taken together, our data indicated that CCAL promoted papillary thyroid cancer development and progression by activation of the NOTCH1 pathway, which provided a new insight on the design of therapeutic targets.