A pneumatic radial tire for a two-wheeled motor vehicle, with which feeling of rigidity is improved and driving performance in turning in high-speed cornering is improved without spoiling various aspects of tire performance such as straight traveling performance, high-speed performance, drive comfort, weight, and uniformity. A pneumatic radial tire for a two-wheeled motor vehicle has a carcass layer constructed from carcass plies (12) and has a spiral belt layer (26) where steel cords are spirally formed so as to be substantially parallel to the tire equator. A gap ratio R1 of adjacent steel cords in the spiral belt layer (26) is 0.45 or less and the total cross-sectional area S of steel cords arranged per 50 mm width of the spiral belt layer is 7.5 mm<2> or less, where R1 = (50 - E x ds)/50, with E being the number of steel cords arranged per 50 mm width of the spiral belt layer, ds the diameter in mm of the circumscribing circle of a steel cord.