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The nonlinear buckling and postbuckling of functionally graded carbon nanotube reinforcement composite (FG-CNTRC) plates resting on the nonlinear effect of elastic foundation under combined load including external pressure and axial compression loads with uniformly distributed temperature rises are fully investigated in this paper. The FG-CNTRC plates are reinforced by FG-CNTRC stiffeners and the plate-foundation interaction is modeled using a nonlinear model. The higher-order shear deformation plate theory with the geometrical nonlinearities of von Kármán is applied to establish the basic formulations. Additionally, by using the anisotropic higher-order shear deformation beam theory, a new smeared stiffener technique is successfully developed for FG-CNTRC stiffeners. Galerkin's method is used to achieve the equilibrium equation system in the nonlinear algebraic forms, and the critical load and postbuckling load–deflection curve expression are explicitly determined. The numerical investigations discuss the influences of FG-CNTRC stiffeners, hardening/softening nonlinear elastic foundation, uniformly distributed temperature rises, geometrical and material features on nonlinear stability of stiffened FG-CNTRC plates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]