This paper presents a sensorless speed control strategy for a permanent-magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) based on an adaptive nonlinear extended state observer (ANLESO). In this paper, an extended state observer (ESO), which takes back-EMF (back electromotive force) as an extended state, is used to estimate the rotor position and the rotor speed because of its simpler structure and higher accuracy. Both linear ESO (LESO) and nonlinear ESO (NLESO) are considered to estimate the back-EMF of PMSM, and NLESO is finally implemented due to its obvious advantage in convergence. The convergence characteristics of the estimation error of the observer are analyzed by the Lyapunov theory. In order to take both stability and steady-state error into consideration, an adaptive NLESO is proposed, which adaptively adjusts the parameters of NLESO to a compromised value. The performance of the proposed method was demonstrated by simulations and experiments.