A novel Partial Sensorless Control (PSC) method was proposed to improve the precision positioning capability of multi-DOF (X, Y and θz) motion for a planar motion stage driven by Sawyer motor. For the position estimation, a laser interferometer was used to detect the translational motion and swing in one direction and to construct a closed-loop control;a sliding mode observer-based technique was taken to estimate the translational motion in another direction and to construct a closed-loop control for a corresponding axis. The positioning performance on open-loop control, closed-loop control and PSC was compared by experiments. The experimental results verify that the PSC is an available way to obtain submicron-order positioning accuracy (0.25 μm) with a 300 mm (X)×300 mm (Y) travel range, which is more larger than that of 100 mm (X)×100 mm (Y) travel range from the closed loop control of a multi-DOF (X, Y and θz) location sensing. The result meets the design requirement of positioning accuracy and travel range for planar motion stages.